Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Steven Kotler: Ultimate Performance

Episode Date: January 13, 2016

Steven Kotler, a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning journalist, teaches us about "going for it" -- and the path through chronic pain that has led him to explore the neurobiology of flow. Kotler is the cofounder and Director of Research for the Flow Genome Project, an international organization, dedicated to putting flow state research onto a hard science footing. In this episode: -How dealing with lime disease led to discovering flow -Overcoming injury as a skill and finding a way forward (grit) -Writing as his main pipeline into flow -Framework for allowing him to be fully committed to the now -Creativity and passion as triggers for flow -Focusing on the things that produced the most flow in his life -Making a list of all the things that already work for him -Starting the day in flow -Quitting when you are most excited -Physical vs. Social Risks -Divorcing self from results -Removing the transitions -Turning fear into a compass -Finding the right language to connect with anyone -The formula for mastery: passion, perseverance, and creativity -Pursuing challenges slightly above one's skill set_________________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.

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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 tryingI-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. And in this conversation, I was fortunate enough to sit down with Stephen Kotler. And he and I first met a number of years ago when he was doing a deep dive into understanding the neurobiology of flow state. And he wanted to understand flow state, the neurobiology inside a specific population, which was world-class and world-leading adventure and action sport athletes.

And that's where we first met. And at first pass and first blush, when we were being introduced, I was excited to meet him because I was familiar with his writing and his work. But I was also, you know, I was hesitant. And the hesitancy was, I was, it's not that I'm a loss of words here, but I'm wanting to capture my hesitancy accurately, is that people that are interested in flow state or the zone, and they tend to be authors and researchers and writers, it seems to always go into the seven steps or the secrets behind world-leading performers. And there are no secrets, and there are no seven steps, and there's no clear path of just one way to do this. And right at the beginning of our conversation, when we met a number of years ago,

I was so pleased with how curious he was about the details, the very, very deep details of the neurobiology, the thinking, the environmental facilitators and detractors from athletes getting into the most optimal state a human can be in. And that's essentially what flow state is. It's the most optimal state a human can be in, and it's highly elusive. And the original researcher, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi, the way he captured this research was that when he asked people, lots of people, to describe what it's like when they're at their absolute best, they came back and there was a common thread, which is that there was a fluidity

between who they were, what they were doing, and how they were doing it. There was a distortion of time where time either sped up or slowed down. And there's a number of other characteristics and triggers as well to enter flow state. And Stephen had a deep understanding of the neurobiology. And there's not many people that have the command of neurobiology that he does. And it was refreshing. And he was asking intelligent questions and he had a rich point of view. And one of the things that makes Stephen, gosh, I hope this comes out in the conversation, in the. And one of the things that makes Stephen, gosh, I hope this comes out in the conversation, in the podcast. One of the things that makes him so special

is that he obviously is intelligent and can manage many different variables and complex variables at once. But he takes that complex information and he understands the nuances and the essence of it and then applies it in his own life. So that when he talks about it or he writes about it later, it's really refreshing because it's very authentic. It's very grounded because not only has he researched and distilled it,

but he's practiced and lived it. And so there's something very refreshing nowadays about folks that are not just researching and telling, but he's added that really important, authentic, credible position of designing his life to understand it. And so I hope that translates in this conversation. And let me just highlight a couple of his most recent readings. He wrote a book, two books with Peter Diamandis called Bold and Abundance. And abundance is the subtitle is that the future is better than you think. And so he's an optimist. And the subtitle of the book Bold is how to go big, create wealth, and impact the world. And the partner that he chose, or I'm not sure exactly how they got together for this book, is Peter Diamandis.

And Peter Diamandis, some of you might know, is the co-founder of Singularity University. And if you're not familiar with that university, I suggest it's well worth going and checking out and investigating. And in essence, it's part university, part think tank, part business technology incubator, where Silicon Valley meets the big thinking and the disciplined approach of NASA. And the idea is to inspire and empower people to build businesses and concepts that can impact millions and billions in a positive direction across the globe. And so what a wonderful partner that gives you a sense and an essence of what Stephen is attracted to and maybe a little bit of insight of who he is. All right. So he's, why pay attention in this podcast. One is that he was debilitated by Lyme disease. And so he understands suffering. He understands what chronic pain is. And so he's

got a point of view about understanding what it feels like to be completely debilitated in a person who has a zeal and a zest and a pop and a spunk about life. And that will definitely translate in this podcast. And so he knows what it feels like to be ground zero for functioning and then to make a particular decision. And that particular decision fundamentally altered his life. And it set him down this path to research and understand flow and what actually takes place inside of a human being when they enter into risky environments that have rich embodiment, meaning that there's lots of information coming

into a person from the activity that they're doing. I'll explain that later. Okay. But in essence, he's got a rich point of view from suffering to high performance and it's wonderful and it's refreshing. And he's one of the handful of people globally, I think, that has such a rich and deep understanding of where neurobiology meets lifestyle and the components that facilitate people to experience the most optimal state a human can be in. In other words, flow state. being this mystical blue moon experience of every once so often that people drop in by accident to experience the most optimal state they can be in, to a very applied way of organizing one's life to facilitate just that. There are triggers, there are characteristics, there are ways to enhance the frequency of people being in flow state. And this is not a seven steps or self-help. It's not that. This is a challenge, a radical challenge for all of us to organize our life and our way of living that facilitates us to be more switched on, to potentially increase the frequency of being on flow state or being in flow.

All right. So my hope for this conversation or these conversations is for us to identify not only how world leading thinkers and doers, you know, how they organize their psychological framework. And again, that's how they see themselves and how they understand how the world works, but also to identify their robust and sturdy practices that allow them to explore their potential. And in essence, the hope is to provide all of us with ways that we can train our mind and our craft in a similar fashion to some of the world's

exceptional performers. And Stephen is one of those world-leading thinkers. And the ultimate goal is to not follow what these men and women have done, but rather to work to understand what they are searching for and for us to seek the same. And I just love that. Let's strip it down. is just that, to understand what they're searching for and to understand the common thread amongst all of these conversations and see if we can organize our life to seek the same. All right. I hope you enjoy this. He's a wonderful gift to the community and the ecosystem of flow state and optimal performance, and maybe even what he's coined as a phrase, the ultimate performance state. Okay. Let's get into it with Stephen Cutler. Stephen, thanks for coming on to the Finding Mastery podcast.

I know that this has been a long time coming. And the reason I say that is because of the history of our friendship. And I know that this conversation was bound to be had in a public way sooner or later. So thanks for spending some time to explore mastery. Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Being able to spend time with you is good. It is good. No, I'm not saying it is good of what you just said,

but I equally enjoy our time. And I think I've said this to you before, is that every time you and I have a conversation, I leave with a buzz, and I leave with more information and a different point of view. And that buzz is, I don't know, it's stimulating to have these conversations with you. So hopefully we get the same experience today. Putting people into flow one sucker at a time, right?

Oh my God, that's good. That is great. And okay, how did you first... Okay, so people are going to be able to do lots of research around you and know that you have a deep understanding of flow. Where did you first get interested in the ultimate It came out of my experience with Lyme disease. I was in bed for almost three years. I had Lyme disease and I was done. I was totally reduced, no physical function, very little mental function. I was awake and able to work and move around like an hour a day. They had pulled me off medicine. The doctors didn't know what else to do with me. They never knew if I was ever going to get any better.

And it was a pretty bleak and dark time. And a friend of mine showed up at my doorstep and demanded that we go surfing. This was in L.A. And it was the crazy – I couldn't walk across the room. I couldn't – you know, it was a joke. It had been five years since I had been surfing. The whole thing was nuts. And she wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave.

And finally, like, I was like, you know, just to get this woman to shut the hell up, I'm going surfing. I mean, what is the worst that could happen, right? So she dragged me out to Sunset Beach in L.A., which, you know, is the wimpiest beginner break in the entire world. And she gave me a board the size of a Cadillac. And, you know, I walked me out to the break. They couldn't, like, carried me sort of out to the break. Super low day, super low tide, almost nobody out, maybe two two foot waves and i'm out there 30 seconds and away it comes and you know muscle memory or whatever muscle memory is the shorthand for takes over and i spin the board

around and i paddle a couple times and i popped up to my feet and i popped up into a totally different dimension the dimension i had no idea existed. Time seemed to slow down. And, you know, I felt like I was floating out of my body and I like I could actually surf and there was no pain. And the craziest part is I felt great. I mean, I felt better than I felt in years. I felt alive for the first time. It was actually the very first time I was like, holy crap, like there's actually something to go back to. Like if I could like this was that this is what life feels like. Oh, yeah, I remember now. Caught four more waves that day by the fifth wave i was i was disassembled they carried me back to the car and they drove me home and people had to bring me food for like 14 days because i was so sick i couldn't even get out of my bed and walk to my kitchen and on the 15th day i could walk again

and i sort of caught a ride back to the ocean and did it again and did it again and over the course of about six months, when the only thing I was doing was surfing and having these really strange quasi-mystical experiences out in the waves, I went from zero functionality or 10% functionality up to like 80% functionality. My first concern was, I'm a science writer. I'm a rational materialist. First concern was, well, surfing is not a known cure for chronic autoimmune conditions, so what the hell is going on? Second is Lyme is only fatal if it gets in your brain. And I am a rational materialist.

I don't have positive and negative experiences. Time does not slow down. I don't float out of it. Like none of this stuff. This is not okay. And I was pretty sure the only reason I was having it is the disease had gotten into my brain. And even though I was feeling better, I was actually killing me. So I lit out on a giant quest to figure out what the hell is going on. Very quickly realized that like these states had

a name flow states. We actually understood the neurobiology of them enough to figure out there's actually a reason why flow kind of reset my nervous system and sort of helped me get over Lyme. We know that flow does reset the nervous system and all the neurochemicals that show up in the state massively boost the immune system. Combination for an autoimmune condition, which is essentially a nervous system gone haywire, right, is perfect. And there's a lot of cases documented by Herb Benson at Harvard of so-called spontaneous remission based around flow. So I'm not the only person who have found this. We sort of understand mechanism a little. Um, but I also really discovered that like the same state that was getting me from seriously subpar back to normal was taking action and adventure sport athletes all the way up to Superman. And like, I was already

at normal. I wanted to know, like, could you go there and how did they do that? And that's, so it grew out of that original desire, you know, 15, 20 years ago. people had, I don't want to say forgotten the value of flow state or the zone as athletes talk about it, but you've been the impotence for the resurgence of this topic. And in a lot of ways, because you popularized it through an amazing population of people that are on the edge of life and death and risk and much more than just bruises if things go awry. And are you aware of how much you've influenced this generation or the timeliness of this group right now of people that are interested in optimization of their, I don't know, whatever desire that they have? Are you aware of how much you've influenced it? I don't know if I'm aware of how much you've influenced it? I don't know if I'm aware of how

much I've influenced it or not. I will tell you that I am constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly shocked by the penetration, by the level of impact, and by the crazy... I'll give you Rave Mahata. He's a friend of mine. He's an engineer. He's a concert pianist he's um a very devout flow junkie and we had some conversations around rise and around flow he turned it into a musical called the flow show that blends like acro yoga classical piano and talks and lectures on flow. He wanted to raise flow awareness. It sold out every night. It debuted for like weeks. The Orlando mayor proclaimed, I think it's July 17th,

Orlando Flow Day. That's never happened before. We have a day, right? Like, so every now and then something like that happens and you're like, what the Orlando Flow Day? Like, are you kidding?

I, you know, all I set out to do more than anything else was I wanted to help advance flow research. And I thought the best way I could possibly contribute was to put all the, cause I knew all the researchers and I knew they weren't even talking to one another and nobody had put all the research down in one place. So I wanted to do that and I wanted to give it a common language. And the other thing you need to know is what happened to Flo is that Huda Akil, who was the head of the American Society for Neuroscience and one of the world's leading endorphin experts, told the New York Times in around the late 90s that runner's high, Flo Self, was a total fantasy. Endorphins in the brain weren't real. And at that moment in time all the research in america dried up it stopped like almost on a dime and she turned out to be wrong we now have pet scans of endorphins in the brain the work was done in germany in 2008 and then it was redone a year later so we've got

really good proof that she was wrong but the research stopped the researchers weren't talking to each other there was no common language and the new age took over, right? And everybody thought this was like fairytale spirituality for guys who spun fire. And there's nothing wrong with spinning fire, but like, you know, nobody was talking about it as a business tool at, you know, the way it should be talked about, or even in terms of action sports. Yeah, and the idea that this is new age that uh optimizing a person's ability to increase the frequency of the most optimal state a person can be in is something voodoo-y or new age-y is it's so far from the truth it's actually

there's there's a clear way to influence our environment and our thinking that can stimulate the appropriate amount of risk and challenge and not letting go of the skills that are required to meet that demand and increase the frequency of us being better. And I've got different ways I talk about it. One way to think about it, one of the reasons the New Age was sort of successful in their campaign in a sense was flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. So feelings, emotions, as you know as a scientist, they were not a serious topic of conversation in science until the mid-1990s when Yach Pansep traced the neuron to neuron connection of six primary emotions. So then we had mechanism and everyone, holy crap, emotions, they're real. So if emotions themselves aren't real scientifically to the mid nineties,

how is an optimal state of consciousness where we're going to feel our best? You know, there was no possibility, right? And I'm not saying that science was off base. We absolutely needed to map emotions so we could have smarter discussions on consciousness and altered states of consciousness and all that stuff. But it really took a long time. Yeah, it's taken a really long time. But there's something really important that I want to understand from you, and you glossed over it when we were first talking, is that you were in bed struggling. Traditional MDs didn't know what to do for treatment for Lyme disease. And then a friend came over and knocked on the door. Okay. Now, when I'm in a place that it's dark and I'm in pain and it hurts to think and it hurts to move and it hurts to breathe.

Okay. First of all, I haven't been to the level of pain you've experienced in a chronic way, but I did have myself a, uh, what I'll call a debilitating, uh, career ending if I had a career, uh, in sport. And, um, and so I, I do understand what that feels like. And it's almost near impossible to pick up laundry, you know, and it lasted for about two years for me. So I have some sort of calibration of what you're going through, but not, I didn't have Lyme disease, but there was a moment in time when you said, okay, I'm going to get out of bed. And I want to unpack that moment because that, it wasn't a conscious decision. No, let me say this better. It wasn't a decision that you were making. It was influenced by another person. And then you took action on the influence that the other person offered you. And so I want to

understand that particular moment, because that was the beginnings of the trajectory that set you down the path to be deeply influenced by a state and to share that state and the science of that state with thousands, maybe millions. And so if we can unpack just that quick little moment. So I think the place you got to start, and you'll know this is true because of your work with the NFL, with the Seahawks, overcoming injury, fighting through injury, playing hurt, all that stuff, that's actually a skill, right? You have to learn how to do that. And older players, people who survive in the NFL, one of the things that's actually a skill, right? You have to learn how to do that. And older players, people who survive in the NFL, one of the things that's absolutely true across the board,

but this is probably true for spec ops and, you know, any athletes we're really talking about, you learn to play to the paint, right? You find a way forward and it's a kind of grit that you have to learn over time. Lyme disease was one of, you know, I over early on when I started out as a journalist chasing action event sport athletes around mountains and not being a professional athlete, I broke about 65 bones along the way. That's not an exaggeration. I spider wiped my legs. The doctors told me I wouldn't run again. I wouldn't ski again. I told them they were crazy and I fought my way back. And, you know, five years later, literally it was fine. Okay. But there, but there it is again, there's that decision. They're crazy. Okay. So you didn't, in that case, you didn't

believe the message that was coming in. And in the former case, when somebody knocked on, when your friend knocked on your door, you took action. Um, even though, because you didn't believe that Lyme disease was going to take you over, even though it was eating away at your brain and nervous system. So that's exactly the same thing. How do you, this is about you now, like, yeah, how do you have the ability to not give in to what somebody else is saying is real at the same time when you're experiencing pain? You know, I just, on a certain level, I don't know exactly what the answer is to that. I, you know, I don't think it's any different than kind of like a standard entrepreneurial mindset

in a sense. I am, or, you know, know one thing for sure when chick sent me high diagnosed the creative personality type he was dead on and one of the things he always talks about the creatives is it's all about what's next what can i do next what can i do next you know i the next project you want to that is such a powerful drive and so a lot of the times like why did i you know what happened when I couldn't walk anymore? It wasn't, oh my God, now I couldn't ski anymore or run anymore. It was, I got to get this fixed because I want to write the next article or I want to write, like, I found a different focus and that's what I cared about. I didn't stay focused on the fact that I was

injured and I never, ever, and you have to, for me in all those situations, you know, I always talked about wanting to be ill with grace and you're never ill gracefully, right? It's always so much more ugly and embarrassing and all that stuff than you ever, ever, ever anticipated. And, you know, I like, you know, the story, you know, there was a moment in time when I exhausted, I bankrupted myself trying to cure the Lyme disease and went like all the standard routes, all the alternative routes. And, you know, when you find yourself in your bathtub giving yourself coffee enemas, like then like there's a moment of like, you're like, it just doesn't get worse than this.

What is more shameful than like in my bathtub? This wins. As far as like embarrassment, embarrassment you're like you have reduced my life to this i used to be a famous author call the end of the freaking bathtub oh my god but all of that stuff like i never took it super personally and i was always even while i was why was these i have two novels that are in drawers one i was writing as i got sick second one that i tried to write while I was sick in my literally one hour of clear headedness a day. I always about, I was always about the art. So in

a really weird sense, like you want to know how I made those decisions. Um, it's that I have been lucky enough to love writing so much and it has, you know, it has given me so much. I have, you know, in the same way that you, I have, you know, in the same way that you, I hear, remember in Rise, Danny Wade talks about, I feel like he owes something to skateboarding. So he's going to always skate through the pain because this sport gave him a life. I sort of feel the same way about writing that same level of demotion. And I want to honor this thing that is, you know, given me so much and sort of allowed me to give the world so much. Okay, so let's pull on that a bit. What is it that, was it an emotional experience that you were having from knowing that you were influencing others through writing?

Or the first thing you said was that it was something about the way it felt to write, the experience that writing gave you. Writing was always about, you know, it was about the flow, the fact that writing gave you writing was always about you know it was about the flow the fact that writing was my main pipeline and the flow was always i never the interesting thing about the impact that i have in the world which is why you say and i'm always like yeah i'm not quite sure i always said with writing i remember a very dear friend of mine is a enormously talented talented documentary filmmaker and just when he was starting to come up and National Geographic was starting to show his stuff and I was coming up as a journalist and

he sat me down and he said, Stephen, how do you do that? You write a story for the New York Times and a million people share your opinion. Yours is the only opinion they're going to get on this particular subject pretty much. So how, like what kind of response, how do you deal with that? And I said, it's so funny

that you say that because it never even dawns on my mind dawns on me that anybody's going to read it I care about my editor saying yes this is good you're done and then I'm on to the next story I'm like when it comes out I always say that my books whatever they do it's not really about me it's about what the reader is bringing and I did my work it's done everything about me. It's about what the reader is bringing. And I did my work. It's done. Everything else that happens is your experience with the book. Like the book did everything I wanted it to do. It allowed me to write it. Like that was what I wanted the experience of that. And that would, that framework that you just described would allow you to increase the frequency of flow state because you're not editing your experience now for something that's maybe going to pay out or be

a disaster later. So that framework allows you to be fully committed to whatever it is that you're doing now, which is writing. So it's that idea actually probably increased one of the reasons why you love writing is because you created a space or a freedom, if you will, to be in it, as opposed to worrying about what Johnny or Susie or, you know, whomever later might be critiquing or supporting. It's a smart point. And there's a lot, right? Like we know flow has 18 different triggers, preconditions that lead to more flow. So creativity itself is one. And what I mean by that is, as you know, underneath every kind of creative thought is pattern recognition, the linking of ideas together.

When that happens, when you get that link, you get more dopamine, which drives focus, which furthers flow. So there's this feedback loop. So creativity itself is a flow trigger. Passion, right, which is a fancy word for saying, hey, I care about this thing, so I'm going to pay a lot of attention to it. Again, drives attention, so it drives more flow. So a lot of those things are built into the writing process. Also, the way I, like I didn't, as you said, because I didn't care about what others were thinking, less self-involvement, you know, a little, like there weren't those fears. I also used a lot of risks. Every piece I wrote, there's a lot of different ways to approach writing. There are guys who, you know, are

really, really good and lucky. Malcolm Gladwell, first book, he's got this writing style that he had developed over a period of time. His first book was massively successful. He hasn't changed his writing style since, and he hasn't changed the level of his attack. He engages the reader and presents ideas at the same level. It's cool. It's great. Every time I do a book, I want to do something harder than I did before, so I'm constantly raising the challenge. I want to write it this way. I want to write it this way.

I want to talk about a bigger idea. I want to keep pushing it up until – Bold is a great example. One of the reasons I wanted to write Bold with Peter is I wanted to know, could you write a business book that didn't suck? Because every business book I read was boring and confusing and terrible and didn't have enough information and tried to like kind of, you know, putting out there. So, you know, every book I try to raise the challenge level, do something harder that I've never done before. This drives more attention. It drives more flow. Yeah. And the responding neurochemicals, as well as you wrote a book with somebody who was a founder

of an institution of learning that is completely counterintuitive to what we've come up learning is the standard for traditional, you know, advanced learning. So nice partner pick. I mean, and the insight that he's got throughout your book is worth everybody picking up and taking a run at it. And I think you got some, you got some challenge writing that book, or let me say that more eloquently. You got challenged after you published that book with some thoughts that people were responding to. And so if we link the idea that you wrote it looking for a flow state, doing something that's difficult and challenging with other people, and then you let go of the outcome. What was the outcome of that book for you? Well, you have to understand the book was on the top of the New York Times bestseller list for three months. It's been translated into 40 languages at this point,

and in the past two weeks, it ended up on three or four different best books of the year for 2015. So it has done phenomenally well. Now that said, back to your point, we published the book and the wall street journal wrote us a piece of hate mail that was colossal, right? They, they looked at three books about the future and they called us out. And you know, one of the things that's so crazy, and this may be the only time I'll ever say this out loud, because I don't like, I don't think it's worth defending your position. I just thought that it's a waste of time. But in both abundance and bold, Peter and I have made a ton of predictions, 500, 600 predictions, whatever, about where technology is going, where

the future is going, what's happening. We were wrong about biofuels. Every other thing we said, if we were wrong, it was because we said, yes, there's going to be a robotics revolution. We think it's 10 to 15 years out. We didn't realize that next year Google was going to buy a robotics company. And what we thought was 10 years out was actually a year out. Like we were wrong in being too conservative, but literally like one error out of this massive amount of predictions. So now I look at like things like that Wall Street Journal piece and I sort of laugh. I'm like, well, OK, but, well, okay. But you can feel that way. There are certainly people, we're writing powerful,

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Okay. And, but it's not that far removed in my mind, as we're talking right now, the central theme of that book with the way that you fundamentally changed your life by going surfing, getting up out of pain and fundamentally changing the way that you did that day from a small little decision. And so have you been able to link those two ideas together? Or is that the, am I Mr. Obvious? No, I mean like, you know, let me give you a simple example. When I started with Flow, I'm not, I don't have a PhD in neuroscience, right? Like that's not my, I'm a journalist by training. A novelist is, my master's is in creative writing, fiction writing. So the fact that I'm now running a neurobiology research institute is a little peculiar in and of itself.

But what I look at is when I met – I've known Peter forever, but when I saw Singularity University for the very first time, that's when I – so what essentially happened, the Flow Genome Project came – You know what? I don't think enough people know about Singularity University. Can you give a quick one line? Sure. It's amazing, by the way. Peter DeMandis and Ray Kurzweil, who is the head of engineering at Google and an author,

came together to build a university in Silicon Valley dedicated to harnessing the power of exponential technology to solve grand global challenges. So to give you a context of what they're doing, over the summer, they have graduates who are from all over the world, about 80, maybe 100 in total. They are charged with,

over those 10 weeks, inventing a company that in 10 years or less can impact the lives of a billion people. And they've already created a lot of companies. I don't think anybody's impacted a billion people, but there are a couple of those technologies that are getting really close when they start to roll out. So amazing stuff going on at Singularity University. And when I got there, I started to realize that the people there, they didn't seem all that different for me. And I kind of figured, well, if they can have this big of an impact, let me try to have that big of an impact. I'd started a bunch of nonprofits along the way, but doing something at scale, and what did I care about most? I wanted to advance flow science.

So that was the goal. Flow Genome Project grew out of that. We started FGP with the goal of becoming the largest open source research project in the world dedicated to ultimate human performance, right? We want a giant mesh network because we didn't want to do it alone. We figured everybody should be involved. This year, our flow profile, which is the diagnostic that anybody can take, it's on our website at theflowgenomeproject.com.

It's a typographic survey. It says if you're this type of person, you're likely to find the most flow in your life in these directions, right? The largest flow science study ever been done was Csikszentmihalyi's original study. It was about 12,000 people. We've now, 24,000 people have now taken our flow profile. It's the largest optimal psych study ever conducted. So when I think about, you know, global impact and size or something like that, I look at that and I say, well, we're nowhere near where we want to go yet, but this start, this looks like the direction I set out to move in myself and the Flow Genome Project and everything else because of Bolt, because of Peter, because

what I saw was going on at Singularity University and that I realized, you know, as we were writing Abundance, I came into Abundance not, I wasn't interested in world changing companies. I was interested in protecting biodiversity. I ran an animal sanctuary. I'd just written Small Furry Prayer. I wanted to save animals. And I had a half a book on how to save animals using technology. Peter had the other half of book about how to use technology to save people. We put them together and that's where abundance came from. But it was not, like none of this was my intention. I came in sort of sideways on that. I love when that works because it's like, it's the essence of the creative process, which is being so present that we're able to take particular frames of interest and merging

them together from maybe different platforms or different experiences or different ideas or different sciences or different arts. But it's that being present that allows us to be able to grab those frames and do something else with it. And when you and I speak, I always feel like you're fully invested and fully connected. And knowing you the way that you write and the structure that you write, I'm imagining you've organized your life to have many moments where you're fully present. And can you pull on that string just a little bit about how you've organized your life? And I think you'll eloquently move right into your sanctuary.

So I think there's, yeah, you're absolutely correct on what you just said. There's two different ways I've structured my life. There's sort of big picture what I do stuff and there's the day to day. I'm assuming you want the big picture stuff and that's. That's right. an illness that nearly takes you off this planet. On the other side, you're like, okay, what the hell do I want to do differently with whatever's next? One of the things I wanted to do differently was I only wanted to focus on those things that produced the most flow in my life because that's where I could A, make the biggest difference in the world and B, it was the only thing that made any sense after knowing that tomorrow could go away. I basically reduced my life to six things. Five of them produced flow.

The sixth one sort of supports all the other ones. And sometimes in that category is conversations like this or speeches or things along those lines, which generate a tremendous amount of flow. So the sixth category is sort of there. Okay, hold that. I want to hear the six categories. But more importantly, I want to pull on this idea that you understood something deeply. And you used the word passion earlier, which is that deep attraction to something. But you understood something deeply.

You lived an experience that mattered to you. It was through surfing, which is one of the reasons you and I think get on so well amongst our interest in high intense and real risk consequence-based environments. But you took that. This is where I think many people, there's some sort of decoupling that takes place is that they have meaningful experiences or they witness something that creates an aliveness in them, and then they don't organize their life to increase those experiences for themselves thereafter. And this is, so, Stephen, knowing you, now you see the three things I'm really interested in? Yeah. Let me address specifically what you just said, because I totally agree with

you. And there's some stuff we talk about at Flow Genome Project to try to coach and train people through these. And these are just a couple of ideas. Because here's the thing behind most people is, you know what, I get it, I hear it, but I'm too old, or I'm too far down the path, or I've got too many bills, or I've got too much going on to fundamentally change my life. And that's, that little conversation gets people really stuck, whether they're best in the world or on the path of it, or just trying to figure out what, what, what life has to offer anywhere. You know, I think the place to start is, uh, most people are unaware of their own life history. They refuse to believe their own life history. And now I don't know how this applies to people who are in their early 20s. Maybe it still

does. But this is one of the things that got clearer as I got older is I could look back on my life and go, OK, there are certain things they've taken a really long time, sometimes 10 years, sometimes 20 years, but I've been successful at them. What did I learn? What can I trust? What did I do there that I already know I know how to do that I can build on? So one of the things that I always tell people to do is make a list of all the stuff that already works for them. Have it written out. Also have a troubleshooting list. The reason is this, and you know this, the more gripped you get, the harder life gets, the tighter and tighter collection of neurons that talk to each other. So you stop problem solving, you stop lateral thinking, those big intuitive leaps become impossible

because you've got very tight logical neuronal circuits working. If you look at somebody really feeling a lot of fear over a business decision or whatever under, you know, FMRI, it doesn't look all that different from OCD. You just go in a loop, right? It's the same thing. So that happens to me too. The only difference is I have a list on a piece of paper that says shit to understand when everything else is going crazy. And I pull it up and it tells me when your writing isn't working. It's usually one of these three things. My brain is no longer capable of actually coming up with those ideas. So I've externalized the database.

And it's a really simple place to start with this stuff. But anybody can do that. I love that. I've never heard you talk about it. What I will walk athletes through or performers through is write down what it's like to be you when you're at your best. What does it sound like? Because when you're not in that, you need some sort of quick little reminder of what

it is to be on point. And then right beside every, what I call epic thought, back it up with three experiences in your life that give you the right to say that. So that's a much cleaner way of doing it than what I think I was talking about. No, I don't. I like yours. Yeah. Well, it's funny because I like yours too, because the idea that what you've just said is have an inventory so that you can come out when you're stuck in your internal loop, neurobiologically as well as psychologically, you're caught in that loop. And that's what happens under fear you I mean this is I'm gonna say the obvious for both of us but there's a condensing and reduction of

attention as well as inability to think when we perceive intensity or we're actually experiencing that intensity when we become overwhelmed that we can't meet the demands of the upcoming environment and that internal and closed loop circus is circuit is what essentially choking is so what you've done it sounds like is you've organized an externally facing document that says listen when you're in that state reference this point yeah exactly because you're not going to remember and i've got by the way i've got one for, I've got one for almost, I've got one for action sports. I've got one for my marriage. I've got one for my dogs, like everything I get gripped about everything that can go wrong. I've got a

list just, and I just, you know, I, can you make it concrete? Like, like for example, let me give you a really, let me writing is really great. So when my writing is not going well, it is one of three things. I don't know my starts and my endings. I don't, I haven't done enough research. And you, so usually if my writing is coming off as arrogant in any way, it's because I don't have enough information. I haven't done enough research. Um, so there's like, I know what the cue even looks like when you're reading my writing. I always say that the first three filters for my writing are never boring, never arrogant and never confusing. Right. If I don't know my starts and my endings, it gets confusing. If I'm, if I'm arrogant, I'd, I'd, it's usually, I haven't done enough research. And the final one is if I'm boring, right, if

that's the problem, I haven't found the right style. So I know like these are the causes, this is the symptom I'll be experiencing, this is the solution. I can't come up with those solutions when I'm in it. Look, I've been writing every day since I was four years old literally. So I've got 43 years of writing experience and when it is not going well which is fairly frequently right um i still forget those things because my brain does not allow me to access them so you've got to externalize the database all right that's good um what percentage

of time are you in flow state so flow as you as you know, is a spectrum experience, right? So you can have, when Csikszentmihalyi first defined the state, he came up with 10 psychological characteristics or phenomenological characteristics of flow. And microflow is when a couple of them show up. So massively focused attention on one thing and time dilation, maybe time is passing and you're not noticing. All the way up to macroflow, which is all 10, which is usually kind of for the first 50 years was misdiagnosed as a mystical experience. And then we figured out it was a biological experience. All kinds of weird shit like what happened to me while I was surfing, right? That's when that happens. And what you're talking about is the flood of neurochemistry that accompanies flow state,

which creates a sense of, it's hard to have a reference point because you can't have that combustion of neurochemistry and from an external source, meaning smoke enough marijuana, drink enough alcohol, take enough methamphetamine and cocaine and heroin and survive. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot going on in the brain and flow. You've got changes in neural anatomical function, brain wave function, and as you pointed out, five of the most potent neurochemicals the brain can produce. And flow is the only time that all five show up at once. And if you tried to cocktail the street drug versions, some of those drugs actually cancel each other out. You're going to end up in a coma or an emergency room.

No one's recommending taking all those drugs. It won't work anyways. It biochemically can't work. You can't cocktail it this way using externals. It's an amazing cocktail. Very, very, very addictive. Massively increases motivation for this reason. Source code of intrinsic motivation.

Once the experience starts producing flow, you want more and more of it. So that said back to your original point, why, if you can't build your life around flow, I get that, but you got to start somewhere. So you can do one thing. You can start, you know, you can put one thing into the calendar, you know, whether it's an hour of exercise a day or however you want to do it. I mean, you know, what we tell people to do is you don't need to build your life around flow. You start by saying, okay, flow only happens during moments of uninterrupted concentration. So find a 90 minute block, preferably first thing in the morning and turn off your cell

phone and turn off your email and shut down Facebook and everything else and have no distractions and do the hardest thing you have to do all day first. Tell people what time you wake up because you're going to back this up. What you just said, most people say, listen, you don't understand. I got to get out of the house at eight o'clock or I'm in the office by 730. Tell everyone what time you wake up. Okay. So it's a fair point. Somewhere between 3.30 and 4 every morning. And I write from 4 a.m. to about 7.45. And that's like every day, no matter what, those four hours are my writing time. Now, you don't have to.

I don't think you need four hours every day. Tim Ferriss talks about keeping a maker schedule. He feels that your feels that you four hour chunks, if you have to do any complex problem solving or decision-making, which is what writing is, he feels four hour chunks are what you need. But if you're doing other kinds of stuff, you can, 90 minute blocks works just fine for this. Yeah. And I think that the beginning of that 90 minutes is the priming and preparation to become more present. And so part of it, like a concrete example is before I would go write when I was in school for my dissertation, it took me like 20 minutes just to literally clean my desk and organize my office, even though it was relatively organized. And it's that process of that 90-minute process of just kind of allowing stuff to click so that I can become more present and literally close all of the mental files in my mind before I'm able to open up the one that I really want to get lost in.

So it's interesting. And for me, one of the reasons I like to start at 4 a.m. is so in flow, right, your prefrontal cortex starts to shut down, right? Transient hypofrontality is the technical term. Well, when you wake up at four o'clock in the morning, your prefrontal cortex is not yet completely online. So if I can transition into writing, like if the gap from like when I wake up to when I am actually at my computer actually writing is less than seven minutes. Five minutes. No kidding. So you wake up.

I go right into it. I don't check Facebook. So you're trying to catch theta brainwaves. Yeah, I am. You're coming out of delta into theta. To make it more specific, I prime this and this is something else we teach. This is a lesson I learned from Garcia Marquez and I'll tell it as it applies to writing, but I think it works for everything.

Garcia Marquez years ago was doing an interview and they asked him, what's the secret to writing every day, to long haul creativity? How do you do this day after day, week after week, year after year for a career? And he said, well, I always quit when I'm most excited. And it's counterintuitive.

Most people don't, like you get to the highest point in flow, and they keep going. A couple things happen when you do that. First of all, the point you're most excited is the point that you have the most dopamine and norepinephrine in your system. Those neurochemicals at that peak only last 20 minutes. So after 20 minutes, it's actually a battle of diminishing returns.

So you're only going to get a little more time. By the time you notice, you're probably 10 minutes in. You oh my God, this I'm really right. So you've only got like 10 minutes left in you. It's not actually that long. Those neurochemicals, you burn them all out. They take a while to replenish. So you're saving some of the tank for later. A, B, the most important thing is you're creating momentum for the next day. When you wake up the next day to look at the writing, you're like, oh my God, this is where I left off. I'm so psyched. I know exactly what comes next. Well, what comes next? That's what Chick sent me. I talked about clear goals as a psychological trigger for flow. That's what he's talking about, knowing exactly what you're going to do next.

So your attention doesn't have to wander, stays focused on the present moment, right? So when I say I built my life around flow, there's the macro level of the six things, but there's also the micro level. Everything I have done is tuned that way, and none of it's very difficult. We just did a six-week training at Google. We trained them up in these same techniques. This is not hard.

And I'll just give you an example. Flow Fundamentals, which is our online, digitally delivered six week course it's an hour and a half a week with some homework right? When we created it it was created because there was a lot

of demand and let's see if we can do this online we had a beta version we worked we did it with Flow Hacker Nation together sort of in the community and it sort of evolved from there but on average right now we're getting a 500% boost in flow after the course, and we've now put enough people through over enough time that we've got year-after follow-on studies, and that number is going up. So it's a permanent, lasting change.

It's not that hard. There are a lot of, you know, there's a lot of components to it. It's not easy. It's a very different way of working. But if you can be 500% more productive in flow to use the McKinsey studies number, then why wouldn't you want to do this? You can get more done in two hours in flow than you can all day long anyways. So here's one. Okay, so I want to get to the six components, and then I want to get into your sanctuary. But this is one of the findings that I pull on for when I'm working with executives, because action sport athletes, they already understand this. And their

challenge is moving from a collector of moments to somebody who stitches moments together. And I'll explain that in a minute. But what executives, what we are training executives to do is the research around those who practice mindfulness or train mindfulness, which is the ability to be deeply present now and extend that ability to be present for an extended period of time, increase the frequency of flow state. And a flow state is the most optimal state a human can be in. Why would you not train mindfulness? Why would you not do it? Yeah. I mean, I agree with you.

We teach people mindfulness for the exact same reason because it teaches you how to focus. Deep focus. That's right. I've had – look, I'm a crappy – when I say I'm a crappy meditator, nothing neat ever happens to me. It's like with running. I've been running since I've been in high school. I have never once experienced runner's high. Not once I you know

I put in my five miles twice a week because that's what's good for me and it's miserable same thing with meditation Nothing fancy ever happens to me in fact I didn't actually believe I was doing it right to the extent that like I found a bunch of guys down in San Diego with a three chick fMRI and we're doing studies on meditating monks I made them do a brain scan of me while I was meditating because I was convinced I was doing it wrong like I was just like nothing happens I can shut it off but nothing happens I'm doing it wrong oh in fact I'm doing it right so like but I've meditated for 20 years I do it every day and it's 10 to 20

minutes because it trains focus so So it means that the next time I sit down to write, I can drop in, you know, almost immediately. You know, it trains focus, but it also gives us the opportunity to access insight and wisdom. And it's that second pillar of mindfulness I think is really important because when we have an increase, when we're further down the path of insight and wisdom, we might be able to be centered more often and be balanced in whatever that means, whatever the word centered means to you, so that we can risk more, so that we can embrace and look to challenge more often, as opposed to giving into the state of fatigue and survival. And I think one of the greatest costs for people to express all that they have access

to within them is fatigue and anxiety. And an anxious mind will keep us alive, but keeps us, you know, pretty much stuck and safe and not allowing us to access the challenge and the risk required to get into a flow state or high performance. And, you know, those two lines are blurred. And the fatigued mind is some, you know, the fatigued body, I should say, is one of the greatest costs to potential. I agree with everything you just said. I mean, you know, even your point about insight, I, you know, as when you just talked about dialing down fear, right, it lessens the amygdala response, right? That's what the otherygdala response, right?

That's what the other thing mindfulness does over time. One of the other things it does is it slows down the amygdala response, which gives that, like that's where the, we can hear, the intuition is always there. It's not, it's not an on off thing. It's all, it's constantly there. We can't hear it because most of what's coming through is just the stuff we're afraid of, right? And you have to dial that down, right? You need, you know, you have to train up situational awareness. I always think that whatever, that's why I think pairing action sports with anything else you're doing in business, for me with writing, but whatever, even running an eff Genome Project is so phenomenal because I think action sports does the same thing. It trains, it uses focus to dial down the amygdala response. The only way to survive as an action sport athlete.

And that's one of the things, you know, you learn to play through pain over time. Um, you did what they do in an NFL season. I get over 20 years, but you learn to play through pain over time and you learn, you know learn to dial back that amygdala response, you add in the mindfulness with it, and suddenly you're starting to get dangerous. Yeah. I love the word dangerous because that's exactly where I want to be. Because when we're facing down danger, we potentially can override our DNA if we have enough skill. And to move into exploring potential into lifestyles and ways of living of high performance, I'd add one more element, which is that we need to understand how to override our DNA,

which is you can't buy it. You have to earn it. You have to do exactly what you've done, which is when you're on your couch, barely alive because of the physical pain, is to make this fundamental decision and then take action on that decision to actually go do something that seems difficult, which in your case was surfing. And I think there's another point that we touched on earlier, but the final, it's not about results.

What matters is that I show up every day and I write, or I show up every day and I work out, or I show up every day and I write or I show up every day and I work out or I show up every day and I follow my breath. Like the results, where it goes, what it produces, do I have a good writing day or a bad writing day? That actually I've learned doesn't have all that much to do with me. My job is to show up. Yeah, and I agree. I totally agree. And I think that for me, the result is what allows me to do it again. No,

no, no. Let me say that better. The result is what allows me to stay at the party longer so that I can do it with the people that I want to do it with longer. Because if I don't get results with people, I'm asked not to come back. And it's this invisible handshake in the world of high performance that we have to get results. And in action sports, if we don't get the desired result, people die. I know you know that. And same with business and same with anything that we're doing where I'm thinking high performance sport, that if I don't help people get results, I'm not asked to be part of the party anymore.

And I guess the word party, I've never said that before in that way. It's not really a party, but it's like this tribal experience that if you don't get results, you don't get to play anymore. I was talking to John Brockman the other day and John is,

he's sort of every scientist's agent. He's sort of invented third culture. He goes way back with Stuart Brand, some of those guys. He had a great way of describing today's thought leader environment. And what he said is, he said, what's really interesting about today, it's your same point but broadened out. He said, what's really interesting about today is it's really egalitarian. Anybody can have an idea.

Anybody can distribute that idea any which way they possibly can. And they're all going to do battle, right? They're all going to fight it out in the arena. And the best ideas hopefully are going to rise to the surface. So I think that what you're talking about is, you know, I think that's everywhere at this point.

Like we want the big ideas, but we also want the results. This stuff has gotten so practical, nitty-gritty over the past 10 years. I think a lot of that's been driven by the science because we finally really started to know what we're talking about. We have a language for it. It's a lot firmer, and you can hold it. It's a lot firmer and you can hold it. And as soon as you can hold it, as soon as it wasn't squishy, oh, as soon as it wasn't wellness and life satisfaction in a fuzzy way, and suddenly they were measurable. And we were talking about something diagnostic and something you could use to make predictions. It became a wholly different ballgame. It became much,

much more practical for, I think, everyone. I think that's just the arena today. 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.

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That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. And you're playing on that space C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B dot com slash Finding Mastery. And you're playing on that space where you value and understand science and the process and the rigor required for making statements. But you also keep your gaze on a mythical or mystical horizon of what could be. This is why I wanted to have this conversation with you, is the balance between both of those is really exciting because it pushes forward into the fuzzy space of the unknown but never leaves the importance of linear logic and even fuzzy logic

to confuse the metaphor a little bit. And so that's one of the reasons I think is you really have designed an exciting way of living and exploring. So can you get to the six points? Oh, none of them are that fancy. Obviously I write. I try to advance flow science, flow research. That's all the work I do with FGP.

I want to try to make the world a better place for animals so i run rancho de chihuahua which is a dog sanctuary and i don't know if people know this but their altruism can also be a flow trigger that triggers something called helper's high which was discovered by alan lukes who found a big brother big sisters back in the 80s also we the same flow methodology that we, at Rancho de Chihuahua, we work with hospice care and special needs care, so very sick animals. Flow is part of our healing methodology. We put the dog, we take the dogs out into the backcountry, we run them up and down cliff faces. There's a ridiculous video. Outside Television did a video called the five dog workout. You Google my name,

you can find it. It's really funny, but it's incredibly effective. There's a bunch of other stuff we do to heal these dogs, but our dogs come to us, you know, with four stage cancer with a month to live two months at most. And they live for years, years, literally we're getting incredible results with this stuff. We're now starting to document. We're actually, our real goal is rather than a document is just to write up our recipe. This what we're doing so we can share it with people that's kind of one of the things that's next on our agenda because we've been now doing this for so long for so many animals that we're starting to go oh wait a minute this this act this crazy thing that we're doing our little skunk works for you know elder care for animals turns out you know it's really working let's try to share that

around anyways dog stuff is about flow. Obviously, my marriage, my relationships, right? These are, there's a lot of social flow. There's a lot of group flow. So you got to like, they're another thing I have to do. And of course, at least twice a week, I have to hurl myself down mountains at high speeds, right? Yeah. Where do you get more risk from that last one or from your relationships?

I, you know, it depends. So I certainly, even though I've managed to do way more damage to myself on skis than almost any place else, downhill mountain biking still actually feels pretty terrifying to me. I do it and I love it. But when you, you know, hit the dirt at 40 miles an hour, it, you know, it's the dirt. It's like the body armor is good, but like thing, people break bones all the time. I've broken bones all the time. So that feels the heaviest. It's got the most perceived risk. Um, but truthfully, I think, you know, in my writing and in working with the Flow Genome Project and trying to, like, these are very new challenges on a lot of levels. So there's a lot of risk there. As far as my marriage is concerned and

my relationships, I guess you're right. And there, there's a there's like they're a constant bet on a certain level um and there's certainly god I had no idea relationships took the amount of work they you know what I mean like when I was when I was younger I had I just like one of the like most I was naive every year One of the things that's so startling to me is I remember when I was, after I wrote, after my second book, I was going to, I'd met my wife. We were falling in love. And I did what every writer wants to do when they're falling in love. I pitched books about falling in love. And I am, they didn't sell.

They were failures. Thank God. The greatest gift anybody ever gave me is they didn't let me write that book. Thank God. So do you think it's a greater, in your experience of being skilled in both love and adventure, the risk of adventure is the way it feels when you break something or hurt something. And there's pain associated with the rehabilitation of that. There's also great pain and vulnerability

because at the moment that you hurl yourself off an emotional cliff and share something or expose or reveal something that's difficult to say, by the way, which is the definition of intimacy, the repair of not being met is really difficult as well. And that meeting can be so hostile because it could be a gaze or a look or a rolling of the eyes that can undo the courage to be vulnerable enough and to be intimate. So I'm wondering for you, understanding risk and the science of risk and the value of risk taking to increase flow state where would

you place and they're different risking physically and risking emotionally are different but i'm wondering they're not all that different if you're talking about social risk right the brain processes social fear and the exact same structures it processes physical fear and that's why fear of public speaking is the number one fear in the world when from an evolutionary perspective you think it'd be like getting mauled by a grizzly bear, but no, it's public speaking. It's because 200 years ago, 300 years ago, if you screwed up socially and you got exiled, you would die.

So the brain still treats all social fears of capital crime. But the Flow Genome Project, when we're telling people you need risk for flow, drives focus, one of the core triggers, doesn't have to be physical risk. You can use emotional risk. You can use social risk, all that stuff. So it's a perfect hack for that, right? And once again, whether it's relationships or all that stuff, I, again, you have to be divorced from the results, right?

Your job is to show up it is to you know say those things to tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth if you can um and that okay so i 100 agree how many times in this conversation uh we've been rolling for about an hour how many times in this conversation have you been editing or processing what somebody else that will eventually be able to listen to this, what they might be thinking? Nah, you're Mike Gervais. We go way back. I don't edit myself with you. I mean, which is probably the wrong.

I mean, there are certainly there are, you know, situations where, you know, for example, you know, Fareed Zakaria, CNN talkingnn talking you know those sorts of things well you know there's a certain speed you have to talk on television there's like i know when somebody asked me that question if i'm being asked a question on television i have 30 to 40 seconds and it has to be super compelling or somebody's going to change the channel that's just the rules of television is a different game with you this a podcast. We don't have time limits, so there's no need for a filter. I love it. Hopefully, if I'm totally making an ass of myself, you'll stop me somehow. I'm not sure I'd recognize it because I think our friendship is so rewarding that we both go there.

I don't know. I feel like we're the two nerds that get to play in really exciting spaces. And then because of that excitement, have engineered our lives to look for ways where we can participate and be on the edge ourselves and in our relationships and in our work endeavors. I think that's very true. Yeah. Is there a phrase that guides your life? No. I mean, so there's a phrase that sits above my computer, which says do the hard thing. And that's what, what that's really there to remind me of is that I usually have one more in me. Like it's, you know, I, if I, if I've just gone through a really tough work project and I haven't worked

out for the day, it's, I want to look up and go, Oh yeah, I got, I got to work. I got to do the hard thing, right?

You just like, I want to do the next step, but it's really, so we were talking about flow hacks and whatever I came to realize. And I think this is true across for most top executives I've met and worked with and trained and coached, they're good at flow. They know how to focus. They know how to drive their attention. Where they get screwed up is in the transitions between tasks.

They know how to be in flow in the task. The problem is the minute they come out of task, they're hit with 50 million other things in that transition before the next task. And that some of them have emotional content, some of them, they can totally disrail everything. So I want to sign up there because it reminds me to just remove the transitions, to go from, I was writing my book to now I'm going to write this magazine article to now I'm going to work on this research for FG. I edit out the transitions because that's where flow can get derailed. So let me just unpack it. Hello. Was that one of the Chihuahuas? That was.

Yeah. What's his name or her name? It's hard to tell who was barking because there's a lot of them around me oh i think that was hula how many do you have uh 25 god what a what a great like this is you organizing your life in a way that's fun and amazing and difficult yeah time yeah i mean you have to understand that like uh first of all you running a dog sanctuary, it's six hours of physical labor every day. Hard cleaning floors. Like, that's – and my wife handles most of it, right? Like, we rarely – we've had three or four vacations together in 10 years. We've never been on a honeymoon. um it's we you know rancho de chihuahua because we do a bunch of different things that make fundraising slightly difficult because we don't follow most standard metrics for fundraising and

dog rescue our volume business how many animals can you save for us our goal is to take a dog that is supposed to die it was on death row about to be euthanized in miserable condition and rebirth it give it back to life know, and let it live for as long as possible. So we don't get as many donations as a lot of 501c3s. And as a result, it's a massive, massive amount of labor that falls on my wife. So whatever credit you're about to give me for this, give it to her. That's awesome. Where can people donate if someone wasn't? Ranchodaychihuahua.org. If they were to donate, do the proceeds go to a particular activity or endeavor? So what we try to do, unless we're fundraising differently, is all the money that we get goes

directly to the dogs. So it goes primarily for healthcare because obviously there's vet care. There's a lot of that stuff. It goes for food. One of the things we do is we feed our dogs probably the best quality dog food ever. We work with a very special, amazing company in Santa Fe, New Mexico, custom-built formulas. That's a large part of what we do. It's not cheap at all. Though I will say that our goal right now is we have one part-time staff person, and we are trying to raise funds to bring her full-time. So if anybody really wants to help, we could use it on that one. Oh, yeah, that's awesome.

This is our first national initiative is launching this year, and it's called Dogs on Film. And the idea is we want animal welfare, dog welfare, and dog rescue to just get incorporated into television. Much in the way that, you know, animal rescue is a weird topic for a lot of people. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy made, you know, huge advances for gay rights. It was phenomenal. We're trying to do the same thing with animal rights and dog rescue. And so it's a huge partnership with directors and screenwriters and actors and actresses. And

it's all kind of coming together and starting to unfold this year. And I think it's really cool and kind of could make a dent in altering perceptions. It's how do you scale up animal welfare? Awesome. That is great. I love it. And let me know how I can help you in whatever way is there. That's too fun. Okay. And then what know how I can help you in whatever ways there. Thanks, brother. That's too fun. Okay. And then what's the right place? Is it to your website? Oh, yeah. www.ranchodadechihuahua, which is C-H-I-C-H-I-H-U-A. Okay. Awesome. Wait, wait. C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A. I screwed that up. Ratchet and Chihuahua. I can't even spell it.

We'll find it. I'm sure we will. Okay. I want to get to a couple of things about you first, which as we're kind of wrapping up this conversation, one is, is there a word that cuts to the center of what you understand most? No. So when people, if you really push on what I do, I've gotten it down to a phrase sort of. I don't know if I could find a word, but when you really lean on what I do, I always sort of seem to play at the intersection. And of course the whole dogs and biodiversity stuff throws us out the window, but I usually play at the intersection of kind of disruptive technology

and human capability. Right. So I, I don't think there's a word, but if like, if you're looking for the center of, you know, the stuff I think about on a daily basis, it's usually there. Cool. Um, do you, you're, you're an expert risk taker. And do you have any information that you can pass on to folks about the process of risk taking? as a guy who's been afraid his entire life. I remember when I was interviewing Laird for Rise, and he said the same thing. And he said, you know, people talk about me as this fearless guy. He's like, I'm afraid all the time. Totally nuts. Okay, hold on.

Bad technology. Say it again. I lost everything you just said. So when I was interviewing Laird. Oh, when I was interviewing Laird, Oh, when I was interviewing Laird, he's one of the things he said to me was, you know, I've been afraid so long. Every it's, it's the most constant feeling in my life. It's what I know best. And it's because he's constantly trying to level up a little bit at a time. A little, it's what you do every day. You just push it a little bit more,

push it a little bit more. And so for me, that was tremendously liberating because, of course, he's Laird Hamilton. So any list of the biggest badasses in the world is going to include Laird Hamilton. And here he was giving me permission to have the feelings I've been having my whole life, which is I don't think of myself as a risk taker. I think of myself as a guy who feels fear a lot.

And the only thing I've learned to do is lean in a little bit because I've discovered, as anybody who does all this stuff discovers, that exactly what I want is usually on the side, other side of exactly what scares me. So I, you know, we talk about using, in Rise, I talk about turning fear into a compass, right? And that, to me, that's a great comfort. I always know which way to go next. What scares me the most? you and I enjoy spending time with, those people that excel in it. So all the adventure sport athletes I know that have been around the game long enough, they understand fear. It's not that they don't have it.

They also know what to do with it. And it's a signal. And then they rely on their mental skills or their psychological framework to be able to adjust according to the neurochemistry and the internal dialogue that they're having around it. And then, so if I could take you down like a quick hit on personality, um, and some skills, I think this would be just fun. Just go quickly on these, uh, street smart or analytical. I'll take street smart. Is that you? Oh, um, no, this is about you. Oh me. Uh, which do I, I, you you know I'm a little bit of both and then if you're walking into

a heavy environment would you be thinking your way through it or would you be sensing your way through it I would be connecting my way through it that's how I so I was in Cleveland where I grew up I grew up as a punk rock

kid and if you were a punk rock kid in Cleveland all I grew up, I grew up as a punk rock kid. And if you were a punk rock kid in Cleveland, all the weirdos hung out in the same kind of four or five block area. And it was everybody from bikers through artists through politicos. It didn't matter what you were. So there were a lot of biker bars, Hells Angels bars, things like that. These were heavy rooms. And it wasn't only till much much later when i realized how heavy they were but i connected my way through them i

just i i never thought i was all all that special i just kind of figured that if i could understand something somebody else could understand something and i like it was just a question of could i find the right common language so whenever i meet people I'm always looking for what's our shared language. How can we communicate? Cause I don't want to have small talk. I suck at it. I want to talk about big ideas and I discovered anybody can talk about big ideas. Most people really want to, if you can find the right language. I haven't really met that many dumb people. I've met people who speak different languages. So, you know, the other thing is I came up as a bartender. I was a bartender for a decade. Sometimes I was a bartender in like tough biker, heavy metal clubs. Sometimes I was, you know, in fancy, you know, other kinds of clubs

and whatever. But like, I, one of the reasons I was successful as a journalist is as a bartender, I learned to talk to anybody. You know, I think that right on that bead, this is why I think you and I connected a while back is because we actually speak a very similar language. But so I got a degree in sports psychology and I promise I got a degree in street psychology first. And I figured it out by living in with basically tough people, punks and people that were, you know, in many circumstances were alpha competitors, sometimes predators, where they're really very hostile to each other. And to figure out how to do that in an ecosystem that's pretending to be a spiritual-based

or fun-loving, easy-going surfer dude, it's the furthest from the truth. The furthest from, at least the small groups that I was part of. Surfing, the surfing community in California and Hawaii, and those were tough, especially when we were coming up. They were tough, tough, tough communities. I know. That's not... Everyone thinks that it's something different.

Yeah. Well, read Chemnum's Tapping the Source, right? Like the original great book of kind of surf fiction is a really great portrait of exactly what that used to be like in California. Or my wife's first book, The Tribes of Palos Verdes. Right? Same thing. I didn't know that your wife wrote that.

And we talked about that a while back. I really enjoyed it. It was great. Okay. Do you follow rules or take risks? It depends on the situation, but I'll usually err on the side of risk. And if you could be the first person to go to Mars and you had a 50% chance of coming back alive, would you go? Depends on my responsibilities.

I've made a lifelong promise to dogs and my wife. If I can get them to decide that they think this is a good idea, I'm in. That's so true. Okay. Do you prefer a slow-paced environment or fast? I need both. My actual day-to-day life is very, very, very slow. I live in the middle of nowhere intentionally. I live in a very small town in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Most people who live in my town have no idea who I am or what I do for a living. The only reason I have any street cred in my neighborhood is because I bought an old goat farm and I turned the goat shack into my office. I basically built a 500 square foot house over the course of a summer

with a friend of mine. We didn't use any power tools because I wanted to know what it was like to solve it. It was a stupid idea, but we did it. That's my office, and they watched me do it, which is the other reason I have any street cred in my neighborhood whatsoever. The world I live in here is very, very, very quiet. I spend a lot of time alone in the mountains or with small groups of friends. Then when I go out into the world and I'm giving talks or doing stuff with the Flow Genome Project, that's very, very fast-paced and crazy. And I need long periods of silence followed by short, intense periods of fun and madness and socialness. And then I go back to long periods of silence. Got it. Okay. Are you internally critical or internally positive? I think like any creative, I'm both at the same time. I always say the thing that's great about flow is when you're in flow,

ideas are coming, you love all of them, they're fantastic. The best part about it is on the other side of a flow state, there's this deep recovery period. You've exhausted all these fear of good and bad. You go from feeling on the top of the world that everything is amazing to feeling really crappy. To me, for for a creative that's a built-in editing filter so i go back to the you know i wrote in a flow state i edited it afterwards if i still like it when i have no feel-good neurochemistry and i'm super critical i can use that negative mood

to fact check what i wrote in flow so i i think I think it's a balance. I think, you know, I'm always Jason Silva and I have this discussion all the time. We had it last week. Um, and we were talking about the fact that I think if you're going to kind of do this, you have to, the reason the flow feels so good is because there's, there's the hard work is hard work. The down is, is a far down and thus, you know, these peak experiences really thus these peak experiences really matter that way and you don't get one with the other. You just have to not emotionally attach to the negative ones. Last question. How do you articulate or define or think about the concept

of mastery. So this has changed for me over the years. I, you know, I, I, I tend to, so I tend to think, I used to say that like, it's kind of a combination of passion and perseverance over time. And I've since added that it's passion. I've come to think of creativity as an emergent property. Gretchen Buehler, the Olympic snowboarder, I was talking to her a couple months ago. And we were talking about she's a very creative snowboarder. First woman to go upside down.

Done a lot of really amazing stuff. And she was talking about how she never woke up in the morning and went to the hill and said, today I'm going to be a more creative snowboarder, right? She woke up and like, she did her job with as much passion as perseverance as possible. And the creativity emerged out of that, right? I now think that you need that emergent, passion, perseverance, plus creativity is how I'm defining mastery for myself this week, right? Let's be clear, that's this week, but the creativity seems to be an emergent property of the passion and perseverance. It's what takes it to the next level, and you have to keep following it up as it grows, right? Like the real point with passion, when we talk about it with flow hacking is we know

that to drive flow, the most important thing is the so-called golden rule of flow, right? The flow channel, the challenge of the task at hand has to slightly exceed your skillset, right? You want to stretch, but not snap. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did a calculation with a Google mathematician. What's the differential between challenge and skills? How much greater should the challenge be than your skill set? He came up with a 4% number. We took that number into the Flow Genome Project, ran some studies with it, and realized that it was a little bit more accurate than a back of

the envelope calculation. Then a bunch of coaches in our network have since you've been using it with all kinds of athletes and players on the Red Sox to like across the boards, they're getting amazing results. So here's the thing though, that's cool. Like I, if I want the maximized flow, that means I have to push 4% today. That's what I have to do. But when it comes to mastery, what that really means is it's 4% today and tomorrow and the next day and day after day and week after week and month after month and year after year for a lifetime for a career, right? That's how you get to mastery. That's how you do impossible stuff. So, you know, passion, perseverance and creativity is sort of what that 4% kind of, under the hood of that 4%, those are the things I see.

But this is my new global definition for mastery that we're going to use this week. And you can ask me again next week and it'll be different. Okay. All right. I love the permission you just gave yourself to change your definition of mastery. Okay. If I'm not learning and growing right, then something's wrong. Yeah, but I would hold that to be true myself. Okay. Stephen, thank you.

I can't tell you how much I've appreciated our friendship and the stimulation that comes every time that we connect and the fun that we have both over the phone and in person. So thank you for being a friend and a colleague that I respect and appreciate. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of the fun as well. It's been a blast. You're obviously, you're thinking it's been everywhere in my work. You're on the board at FGP. You're in RISE.

You know, none of this happens without you. So thank you back at you. This was a lot of fun. Too good. Okay, so where can we learn more about what you're up to? stephencottler.com, flowgenomeproject.com, ranchodechihuahua.org. There you go. Okay, and then for those of you who are still with us, we appreciate you.

We thank you. Send stuff to Stephen online. He's highly engaging. He's got lots of information that's coming out, and he'll answer your questions. So find him on Twitter. And then if you liked or enjoyed this, please tell somebody about it. And I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with the podcast, but it's just meant for me to be able to learn from people I respect and people I'm curious about their point of view. And as much momentum as we might be able to gather from this might be able to keep us around longer.

So iTunes is a way to find it. Subscribing to Finding Mastery. And if you can write a review, it's helpful. So thank you. And then you can also go to the website FindingMastery.net. Find all the information there. And on Twitter, at Michael Gervais. Okay, bud.

So I appreciate you and look forward to next time we connect. Mike, this was super fun. Thanks for having me. Okay, take care, bud. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode

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