Habits and Hustle - Episode 107: Steven Kotler – Renowned Leader in Peak Performance, 3x NYT Best Selling Author, 2x Pulitzer Prize Nominee

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

Steven Kotler is a Renowned Leader in Peak Performance, 3x NYT Best Selling Author, and 2x Pulitzer Prize Nominee. Steven dissects what it takes to perform at each individuals’ peak, what it is to be a peak performer and the steps you can take to see vast improvements in focus, passion, and drive for yourself. Decades as a journalist following the extremes of what humanity is capable of, and boiling that down into the why and how of flow, and goal setting, he gives you a glimpse into exactly what you’re missing when it comes to progress in whatever field you’re pursuing. Whether you’ve been struggling to exercise, cook, learn guitar, touch your toes, or any other skill, Steven lays out how to change and what to do to start seeing real results. Youtube Link to This Episode Steven’s Website Steven’s Instagram ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Jeep is a registered trademark. Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Fresh it. So today on Habits and Hustel, we have Stephen Kotler. Stephen is an American author, journalist and entrepreneur. He is best regarded as one of the world's leading experts on ultimate human performance. While best known for his work on flow, Stephen also writes about the use of non-ordinary

states of consciousness in optimizing performance. He is also the founder of the Flow Research Collective, a research and training organization. The mission of the Flow Research Collective is to understand the science behind ultimate human performance and use it to train up individuals and organizations. His newest book is called The Art of Impossible, and we discuss that and all his other findings

on how you can become the ultimate optimized human. Enjoy, like I did. You have a lot of books behind you. I do. I do. I've got more, I mean, like it's worse. It just goes on and on and on. And here's the crazy part.

Wow. This is my office. It's not even my part. Wow. It's just my office. It's not even my library. Are you joking? I'm not. So you actually have a library? Yeah, I do. I've legitimately got a library.

When I was growing up, when I was a little kid, my neighbor had this tiny little library. I was a book feed from a little kid on a tiny little library in his house. I mean, it was a closet really, that he had turned into a library. I loved it. And I used to go in there and work. And so I always wanted one. So yeah, I've got my offices line my books and my library. I have a little library.

Wow, because you know my next, I was going to save you. It looks like a library is just behind you. So how many books do I have? How many books do I have? I was going to ask you, how many books can you read a week? That was my first thing I was going to ask you. It depends, obviously, it depends. It really depends if I'm reading neuroscience, it's going slower, right?

The neuroscience textbooks. And I read a lot of textbooks. So I tend to read one, I'll read a novel a week and I'll probably read a science book a week as well. So probably two books a week, I would guess. Wow. Sometimes more. Sometimes, every now and again,

I'll stumble onto a science book that'll take me a month or something like that. But I tend to read about 100, 150 books a year. And what do you think, what are you reading right now? Like, where are the two books you're reading this week? You're gonna laugh. It's the Cambridge Handbook of Imagination. Oh, okay. You're gonna look amazing about this book.

This is, I have to talk about this book for a second, because it's so cool. Unlike every other textbook I've ever read, they actually bothered to go around the world. So like I read this morning, I was reading an essay on Hindu and Vedic interpretations of what is imagination in ancient Hindu and Vedic traditions and how did they think about it. And it was just fascinating. I would never stumble upon that, but it was fascinating. It was like, oh my god, this is so cool.

Yeah. So I'm reading that and I'm reading a book called The In the Air, which is the new Richard came Morgan book, who is the guy who wrote altered carbon, which they made into a Netflix show. Yeah. He's a really dark cyberpunk future writer. So I guess you becoming a journalist kind of,

you came by it honestly, like that was kind of like the, I was like, I'm not, I mean, I know I, it came by it dishonestly, I'm trained as a poet. I was, I'm a poet through college. My senior thesis in college was an epic poem, there was 110 pages and after it was done, we realized it was a very mediocre epic poem, but it might make a good novel.

And so I rebooted it, it became my first novel. And then I became a fiction writer. I'm actually my master's in creative writing. And I'm a novelist. And I fell into journalism because how the hell do you pay the bills when you're writing novels? Because novels don't hold bills. And it turned out journalism was a much, it was, I'm naturally curious.

I have, I'm not intimidated by anybody. So like talking truth to power and asking hard questions. Like none of that bothered me. And yeah, and I, you know, and I, and long forum journalism turns out to, it was a great place to learn to write. Yeah. In a sense, so, I got the greatest writing education in the history of the universe, right? I was taught to be a journalist

by 100 of the smartest editors in the history of the universe. It was amazing. Where was your first, like, what was your biggest and best jobs a journalist? Like, where was your favorite? So... It could best story you've done. The best said, interesting.

I hope people would argue, the most famous story I did was a wire magazine cover stories on the first artificial vision implant. So the very first time a blind person went from, I can't see, I've been blind for 20 years, both eyes to, I'm driving a car around a parking lot because there's a thing in my head in two days. So that was what I covered, right? The art of impossible is about those moments in pause. So I had a list of 37 sci-fi technologies that

I was tracking and I thought they were all going to become science-facts. And so anytime one of them did, I tried to be there and I tried to write about it and that's a lot of what I did for a very long time on the like non-sports side of the work I do and art impossible, right? I think it was those things. So that story was particularly amazing. I think the best story I did, and nobody, it's in my book Tomorrowland, it actually opens my book Tomorrowland, is a story about of the first Bionic soldier,

the first soldier to receive a Bionic body party, got a, it was a Bionic soldier, the first soldier to receive a bionic body part. He got a, it was a bionic ankle. And I told this story of both the man who created it, you hair, who's the head of biomechatronics at MIT, but he was literally one of the world's greatest rock climbers. Lost both his legs, became the world's greatest paraplegic rock climber, then decided that the technology itself was broken,

not that he wasn't broken, he was broken and became a biologist and created the world's first Bionic Body Part. And the soldier who ended up with the body part, his story was equally crazy. He was major David Roselli, he called him Cowboy 6, he was like a total gunslinger in the middle of the Iraq war, he was famous for being like, find me the worst spot in Iraq, send it and he would go in and within a year. Like, he didn't just come places down, he would come places down and then put women on the city council. And like, like he was like a true like light bearer for democracy.

And these two came together. That's what makes a great story. Great story is the journalism is whatever you have to get. If you can find the intersection of two or three colossus, the artificial vision implant too. The doctor was a maverick lunatic who was totally outside of, you know, working out nobody liked him.

Nobody would think that they thought it was crazy. He was working in a illegal lab in New York that he couldn't do the research in America, and he was doing it anyways. And his patient was this crazy musician named Yens who had paid for his $100,000 surgery by teaching himself classical piano and giving Chopin concerts blind, like blind, lives in the

North Woods in Canada, built his own house, delivered all his own babies, taught himself blind to be a master, raised $100,000 giving piano. Like that's what makes a great story. Oh my gosh, that's an amazing story actually. Yeah, so the journalism, I mean, the writing is a large part of it, but the truth of the matter is on the other end of 30 years, or I could tell you that the, what is real is the, the knowing when you've got two or three great stories and they hit together, that, that, that's what really leads to a great story.

So it's, I think it's less about the actual, I mean, this, I can write in, in whatever, but it's getting absolutely lucky with that. And I, that's happened. There's like seven of those over the course of my career. And then you have to, the story itself has to, like one of the greatest stories I ever wrote, Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood Madam. Oh my God. Of course. Heidi tried to open a brothel in Nevada for women. So male hookers and like she went up against, like she went to war of Nevada to try to do this because they flipped out. I remember this a little bit.

This is like how many years ago, we talked about it a little bit. 90, 2000, 65, right in there. I wrote a story for the LA weekly. It won a bunch of awards called the Heidi Chronicles and it would literally like I went I drove from LA to Vegas with Heidi. We never made it because our car exploded. It actually caught fire in the middle of the fruit. I mean like it was the craziest thing you've ever seen.

We met, there was a brothel war going on. We met brothel spies in Nevada. It was like, it was literally like, I just walked into Oz as if Oz was being directed by a little bit of a high flight. It was crazy, crazy. It involved, I still remember being driving down the freeway with Heidi Fleiss.

I'm in the front seat of this beat up trucker dogs or in the back. She's driving, I'm here, my photographer who's crazy Irishman, Christopher McCann is sitting here. And Heidi's, there's, in rush hour traffic on the 405 and her hood is in flames. I mean like flames are shooting out of the hood. And Heidi's like, she's over there

and she's trying to prevent it's not happening. She's like, no, I want to be fine. I mean, it's trying to prevent it's not happening, she's like not out of every fight, it's just a little smoke and finally like Chris, who's the calmest like he's, I've been in war zones with this dude and nothing phases in, but he's sort of like leads forward and looks over,

or he's gonna big mohawk, he's a skinny punk rock, I wish we could just look at him and say, lady, pull the fuck over. I think I have every seed. Anyways, yeah, so probably not podcast material, but fun journal and stories. Oh, absolutely, no, it's great.

I would have ever happened to Heidi. Is she like, what is she doing now? No, no idea. She was an interesting, I knew a lot of people who all, like I, you know exactly, I know what created a hide, like it's, she met her and you're like, oh, I know, I know you, I know exactly how you got here and where you came from and what happened. Like, it dates total. That's really. And so what happened to her brothel? I never have you. They shut

it down. Yeah, they got it. They shut it down. They didn't, I, Nevada is ready for women brothels for women. It was the combination of Heidi and the idea that it was just too much. I live in Nevada and it's outlaw state. It's great in that way. Like really don't regulate on the body. You know what I mean?

That kind of stuff. But Heidi was too noisy, right? The broad, like he's a respected, indiscretionalist, has their part of culture and Heidi was noisy. And that was their problem. More than the, more than what it meant sexuality was. I thought that was what always the feeling I got. I would imagine like you can just do an unout of biography of yourself. You know, like the stories that you must have just in terms of like the stories,

like the life experiences that you've kind of have yourself just from what you've covered and what, you know, even when as a juror, I read about how you would follow all these extreme athletes into like danger basically without having any kind of knowledge of the sport, right? And that's how you became a... It wasn't even... The athletes, intentionally in the 90s, tried to kill the reporters. You think I'm kidding.

You think I'm kidding. I wanted to point it this out to my friend, Kristen Almer, who she's actually an art of the most one, right? One of the greatest female athletes in history. And five years ago, I was like, you know, we did, I mean, almost everybody who covered this, we all got PTSD. Everybody got PTSD, who was the journalists who were covering this stuff. They would go out of their way to try to scare the scare us to death. And it wasn't that hard. What they were doing.

Yeah, that was fairly common. You know, it's funny with journalists, the action-sport athletes, and you see it with Speck-Ops guys. As a general, we don't tell the stories Unless we're talking to other journalist speck ops people or export athletes because I've discovered if I tell you a story about my life The first one's fun the second one's kind of fun to the third one you start comparing your life to me And by the fourth or the fifth you feel bad and to me and by the fourth or the fifth, you feel bad. And I got paid to have adventures, right?

Like I put my life on the line, but I got paid to have adventures. And you can't, there's no comparison. You're like, these are three categories of people who found a way to get paid to have adventures. And you can't, like their comparisons aren't good. So I could write an autobiography. It's hard to like, it's not to be, you know, it's hard to believe on one end

and on the other end, it doesn't like, I don't know. Somebody who write a biography maybe, well, I maybe I'll say yes to that one. I don't know. I think it'd be fun. I think just because like you're like, well, you've been writing a lot about your, I think you've got like what, 15 books now,

or 10 books, 11 books, a lot of books. 13 books. And like you have like nine of them, or 10, and a lot of them are New York Times best sellers. Like you have, and a lot of them are based around like human optimization, peak performance. Like is that how you started to get super passionate about that is when you started to follow along with these athletes.

So it started, I mean, it started accidentally, we started, I came out, I was a, you know, I told you, I was a, I was a fiction writer, I was looking for a Ellen De Magazine journalism. And journalism, you know, the 1990s, there was an explosion in the publishing, there were magazines all over the place. And it was on a certain level, they gave the lunatics the keys to the right They gave a group of like outside a weirdo punk rockers the key of a media empire That's essentially what the 90s were and It was I started if you whatever you were curious about you could cover and I was covering action sports and The 90s and action sports is often talked about as the era of impossible because more so-called

impossible feats than ever before were done in every sport. And it wasn't just that I was seeing the impossible. It was one, it's a very different thing when you see the impossible on a screen or you're literally go drinking with somebody out of Friday night and you just hang out and then say, any morning you get up and you go skiing and they do something that for all of recorded history has never been done and nobody ever thought would be done. It's a very different thing when I like it's just your friend doing it

because you know they're very human and it was weirder with the Action Sport Athletes because if you go into the 1990s, I was already about Action Sport Athletes. I was also writing a lot about neural science and psychology and performance issues. So I had some familiarity with that world. The athletes I was covering writing a lot about neuroscience and psychology and performance issues. So I had some familiarity with that world. The athletes I was covering, most of them came from broken homes in horrific childhoods.

They had very little money. They had very little education. There was a lot of drugs, a lot of drinking, a lot of very significant risk taking. So if I say, hey Jennifer, there's this group of people, they do a lot of drugs, they take a lot of risks, they drink a lot, they got no education. They got very little money and they had really bad childhoods. What do you think happens to them, right? In almost every version? What doesn't happen is they redefine the limits of the human species over and over and over and again. So that's what I was seeing and I wanted to know why the hell it was happening.

As you pointed out, I did chase these athletes around. I broke a lot of bones along the way and there got to be a certain point where I was like, wow, this is, I love these forts. It's fun to do this, but this is, the cost is too steep. I don't want to do, like, I just don't want to have any more surgery in the name of work, basically. And so I took this question of what does it take to do this impossible? Then I started answering the athletes everywhere. I took it into the science fiction turning into science fact, right? When I was in the room watching William DeVel turn on the world's first artificial vision implant. Yes, I was reporting on the story, but I was also trying to figure out how the hell. I mean

this was a biblical miracle, right? Literally like the last person who made the blind see was Jesus as far as anybody who's miracle, right? Literally, like, the last words that made the blind see was Jesus, as far as anybody who's concerned, right? Well, I believe that story. It's a biblical miracle. And here is this crazy Maverick inventor doing the same thing. I was trying to figure out why it's happening. And it was the same thing.

I mean, William DeBelle was not the poster. I mean, he was a diabetic in a wheelchair, not legs abutated below his knee. I think on one leg. I mean, he was a mess, um, difficult, complicated, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I, you would see it over and over and over again. And it begs from a simple human perspective. Because suddenly you're under the hood and you're like, wow, these are not extraordinary people. They're doing extraordinary things. They come extraordinary people, but they didn't start out that way. And they're very

human. They're very much like you and me. So how is this happening? Right? How is this possible? Well, exactly. So I wanted just to say, like, yeah, so the book is obviously called the Art of Impossible, your newest book. And you said something already that I wanted to ask you about. But first I wanted to say that you say there's four skill sets that people need to become, you know, to do things that, you know, peak performance are impossible, do things that are impossible. But like, to your point, you said it's not the extraordinary people that you think are doing it anybody can do it These are things that like what you've found in all your research is that like it's people

Literally are not extraordinary. They're actually ordinary until they become extraordinary And you can't you can't even see it happening until it's happened basically. Yep I think there's two things that I work to talk about here The first is exactly what you're just saying. The way 30 years of studying these moments in time, when we saw something that we didn't capitalize impossible, that was never supposed to happen, being done. The major lesson is,

we are all capable of so much more than we know, but human capability, human potential is invisible, especially to yourself. And it's because we figure out what we're capable of by stretching our skills to the utmost again and again and again, and that capacity emerges over time. And even, I can even, the research is even crazier than that. There's research, a lot of research at this point that shows that you can even look at an activity from the outside, or you've got a deep background in fitness.

If I think of a sport, you've probably never played. Highlight, for example. Right, not a sport you've ever played. And I say, Jennifer, will you, do you think you're gonna like highlight and you think you're gonna be good at it? Now, you're a woman who knows a lot about her body, has spent years understanding that stuff with the research tells us, is it you cannot from the outside predict whether or not you're

going to like high-line or be good at it, until you actually get into it. So at every level, our potential is invisible to ourselves. The second lesson is I think the fort lit let's back up and define. We talked about capital I impossible. The Arb and Possible is a book for anybody interested in small I impossible, which I define as if I long small I as possible is that which we think is impossible for ourselves. Right. I grew up in Cleveland Ohio. I wanted to be a writer when I was four years old. Cleveland, Ohio in the 70s. Blue-colors steel meltdown. I don't know any writers. I don't know how you become a writer. It was like I woke up one morning and said, Mom, Dad, today I'm going to become an elf. Or a hobbit, right? I mean, like that's...

That was the... And that's in small, eye and possible. What does that mean? There's no known path between point A and point B and statistically really poor odds of success. Rising out of poverty is another capital I impossible. Overcoming trauma is another small lie impossible. Becoming world class at anything, small lie impossible. Becoming a successful entrepreneur, small lie impossible. Small lie or big lie. Small lie. These are all small lie impossible. But what I also want to point out is that nobody, I don't think there's anybody who's been in the room of more

times than impossible has become possible who's currently alive right now than me. And not only were they not extraordinary people in that room, I don't know that nobody who set out to accomplish capital lie impossible. Not one person who really literally did something that has never done that wasn't their goal. Their goal was small line possible, after small line possible, after small line possible, and that capital I was just what was next. And let me give you a really concrete example of this from the very first conversation I had with Laird Hamilton, big wave surfer. Yeah, no, I know, he's great.

He's like, he's like an extraordinary, you know, he is an extra, but yes, I'm curious. Laird, tell you the story and then you tell me if you agree with that. First time I met Laird, he was 33 years old. He was then telling me to jaws, I was about 27, and this is in the 90s, he was widely considered the biggest badass on the planet. Right, exactly. As you described him, he's widely considered the biggest badass on the planet, right? Exactly. As you described him, he's that guy. He still is, by the way.

He still is that guy. He still is that guy. He still is that guy. But ask Laird about trying to kill journalists. Ask Laird about trying to kill me, by the way, besides the point. When I met Laird, he said, you know, Steven, people, they see me on a 50-foot wave. And 30-th year-old, they see me on that 50-foot wave and they think, oh my God, dude, that isn't possible.

You're a layered hamlet and no way could I do anything like that. He's like, maybe. But you know what, they didn't see me at three years old on a three-foot wave. They didn't see me at four years old on a four-foot wave. And they didn't see me at five years old at a five-foot wave. And in fact, they didn't seeming last week on like 49 and a half foot wave. So they see me on a 50 foot wave and they think, do, whoa, that's impossible. And I think, layered man, you're not even pushing very hard. Come on, six more inches. We could do better than that. That's what I mean by small line possible, left or small line possible, left or small. Most of the time the capillain possible

is just what happens next. And Laird will tell you, Laird is an extraordinary athlete, and maybe he's extremely well built for the thing that he went after. But one of the things that I think is true, I'm at a tremendous amount of people, my time as a journalist.

And I, I've met a tremendous amount of people. My time is a journalist. I've met a tremendous amount of people. I think everybody's got something. They've got everyone's got one or two things that they can do probably better than anybody else in the world, or be at least world-class. I've never met anybody. Just like I, just like I haven't met, I've met very few dumb people. I've met a lot of people who are, speak different languages. But if you can figure out language somebody speaks and you talk to them about what they're really passionate about,

pretty quickly figure out, people are all usually smart about something. And that thing that they're smart about, they probably can be world-class. And if they had a playbook and they knew what they were doing. And so I tried to provide the playbook. You know, it's funny. I just had a conversation with someone yesterday

about that exact thing. That there's been like a, I don't remember who the philosopher was, but it was basically that nobody's smart or nobody's stupid. It depends on you got to find your niche and you'd be smart in that if you find what you're interested and passionate about. But I wanted to say something that you were talking about earlier and kind of to this thing as well with even layered about learning and like what it really is to become, you know,

to become, you know, to optimize your performance or to become extraordinary or do things that are impossible. Because in your book and you talk about this, it's not necessarily what we've all kind of like read about by Eric Sid and of course Malcolm Gladwell, who talks about the 10,000 hour rule, right? That if you just do 10,000 hours at something, you'll become a master at it, right? Because what you were saying earlier in the podcast is that the extreme people that you are dealing with they did not have the same background like it was down into like how you were raised you know the marshmallow like we I really want to break that down. Yeah, I really want to delve into the learn like how does someone really become extraordinary learning and like what what people think it is and versus what the research actually shows. Okay, so let's, let's answer your first question,

Sagittat, invert your order. So, that's fine, I'll answer them. I'll answer. The answer is, because you mentioned it earlier, there are peak performances is nothing more or less than getting our biology to work for us rather than against us, right? That's all that's going on when we're talking about peak performance. So when we're talking about going for the impossible, we're just, I want to be my best at work today, the skills are the same because it's just our biology.

And that biology is, these are, by the way, skill sets, but motivation. So when I say motivation, I mean external motivation, internal motivation, goal setting and grit, because it's a catch all term for these four things. But motivation, learning, creativity, and flow. These are the four skill sets underneath human performance, human cognitive performance. And in whatever the task, whatever the goal, easy way to think about it, motivation is what gets you into the game. Learning is what allows you to keep on playing. Creativity is how you steer,

and especially when you're steering towards high-hard goals and possible goals, I wanna be a writer, I don't know where the hell I'm going, I don't know the way that creativity is, how you steer, create a problem, something in the flow, which is the optimal state of performance. Flow is literally just fine as an optimal state of consciousness,

where you feel our best and the performer best, and it's universal. If you're human, you can get into flow. We're all hardwired for this. That's the entire, like that's the suite of peak performance. That's all anybody is doing. The thing you're specifically referring to is what the Axisport athletes presented a big challenge to our standard. There are a number of really standard theories about excellence. What does it take to be the best in the world?

And one of them, as you pointed out, is Anders Erickson's so-called deliberate practice, right? Malcolm came up with 10,000 hours and Andrews himself had said, you know that's an arbitrary number, right? Like Malcolm was literally said, how long does it take to become like a first chair violinist? So how many professional violinists had practiced 10,000 hours by the time they were 20? If he had set the cutoff as 30 and Andrews himself said, you know, most professional violinists don't start actually playing professionally until they're in their 30s. So then it would have been 20,000 hours.

And for memory experts, by the way, you can become a memory expert, like memorizing pie out to 400 digits or whatever you want, very, very quickly. That's a skill you can onboard really, really quickly, archery, rifling, shooting, those skills come much faster than 10,000 hours. So that's really, it wasn't the exact thing. And what Anders thing was deliberate structured practice. 10,000 hours of deliberate structured practice in the problem with the action sport athletes is, you know, nothing deliberate or structured about the way they went out onto the mountain

and they had a blast. But as a guy who spent the decade with these people, there was nothing delivered destruction, you know what I mean? At all about it. Accessports has gotten that way now like those coaches and formalized and some of those things are a little more delivered instruction But back then no not at all. The second one was marshmallows. This is Walter Michelle's work, right? You can if the kids who cannot eat the marshmallow and delay gratification, they perform so much better later in life. And it's access for, it's a pursuit of pleasure

to have done experience. These are not people who delay gratification. Everybody in access for, especially back in the 90s, these were like hardcore heatiness. They were fat, young kind of people. They would have eaten the marshmallow and then some. And yet, you know, they were succeeded. And the other part of the mother's was that would be pointed out also, which is genetics and other childhood experiences, the largest determined of where you're going to go. And, you know, they didn't have. Everybody I met had a crappy childhood experience.

I mean, they was really rare to find an access board athlete who was remarkably happy. Most of that, we're going to be where they're growing up. Most of them sort of got driven to their sport. Right. So that was the challenge and it was a puzzle and the answer is flow. So what these athletes got very, very good at is producing the state of flow while they were doing their sport and flow massively amplifies learning and memory. And easy way to think about this. Underneath the state of flow, there's a bunch of different changes in the brain in the body, but you get five or six depending on the other people around. Big, feel good, neural chemicals that show up in flow, dopamine, or epinephrine, and an endomyze serotonin,

and endorphin. And sometimes oxytocin. And these are all pleasure chemicals, they're reward chemicals, they're performance and as it chemicals. But quick shorthand for how does learning and memory work in the brain, the more neural chemicals that show up as an experience,

better chance that experience moves from short term holding into long term storage. That's another thing neurochemicals do. They tag experience. Super important, save for later. So flow is this huge neurochemical dump, which is why stuff that happens in flow we tend to really remember.

When the DOD did studies on flow and learning, they found that soldiers in flow will learn 240 to 500 percent faster than normal. So what happens is by developing an extremely high flow lifestyle and practicing their sports in flow all the time, they got so much farther faster and they did it in a very unconventional way. So that's the flow end of the equation, motivation, learning, creativity, and flow that's more of the flow end of the equation. But obviously, you can see that flow amplifies learning, and it also amplifies motivation, right?

It works on all these systems, but that's what you were talking about there. I was. Yeah. And then let me ask you something. And so does that mean that forget about the action, the extreme athletes. How about just in terms of people who are, you know, extreme and everything else? It doesn't even matter. So, Jennifer, whenever you see a culture of innovation, this could be Seattle, Grunge Rock

movement back in the 90s. Right? This could be San Francisco in the 60s with the hippie movement. This could be Silicon Valley today, right? Whenever you see a culture of innovation, what you're seeing is always a cold flow states have triggers, preconditions that lead to more flow, 22 have been discovered. There's probably way more, but that's what we've found so far. And we can go into a lot of detail if you want, but it's since that whenever you see a culture of innovation,

access for its Silicon Valley doesn't matter, you're seeing culture built around flows, triggers, where, you know, and flows, triggers become very foundationally important to that culture, and that tends to be what produces innovation. In fact, to put it in a more prosaic business context in Corvette America for the past almost 100 years, whenever a major corporation wants to innovate, one of the first tools they'll reach for is the Skunk Works.

Skunk Works is like isolate the innovation pod from the rest of the company. It was an idea that was originally developed by Lockheed Martin in the 1940s to build fighter jets faster than the Germans. And there were 14 rules for how do you build a great skunkworks? And everybody's done this. When Steve Jobs wanted to invent the Macintosh, right, it was the Apple computer was done in a skunkworks, when Walmart wants to do something, they use skunkworks, it's everywhere in business, and get their 14 rules for how do you create a skunk works in the original document.

Most of them are flow triggers. They're most of them are about creating conditions that are essentially flow triggers. Whenever we want to do innovation, this is what we do, because this is the biology. This is how it works. So I like to, you know, I hope you had this experience reading art or embalzible. I always think that whenever I talk to anybody who's good at their job who's successful, huge chunks of the book should be familiar. Because this is right, there's just your biology. This is the toolkit. So the

I hope your experience was, oh, wow, I do that. Oh, wow, I do that. Oh, I didn't know I had to do that in here. And I didn't know this is why I was doing that, and I was tied to that, but I tend to, and people tend to have different weak spots, you know, tend to get, yeah, for how you, what you do for a living, right? Like I can tell you if you're a spec ops man or woman in special forces,

you have crappy recovery practices. Well, because, like, like, like, usually people, like have blind spots, certain, you spots, certain things that they don't tend to do, because it's not sort of baked into their culture, but basically the performance culture that they come up in. But as a general, most peak performance when they read the book, go, oh, yeah, I can recognize 30, 40% of this stuff, a bunch of it's new, but like, I'm doing this stuff too. And of course you are, because it's just your biology, right? Keep coming back, you got plenty of space. Oof, not how you would have done that.

You like working with people you can rely on, like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Say, hey, get a quote today. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O. Right, I mean, I think it's interesting. I really love the learning, the learning section a lot, a lot. I have a bunch of questions about the, the flow triggers, but, um, you talk, you,

I, the learning part is a part that I was like, oh, you know what? Like, if you have to, like you, you set, you talk about the how, like, when you learn a different language or whatever, you can read like three or four books and it makes no, you can't understand a word. And then finally, like, you, it's like pattern recognition, right? Yeah, a lot of what, yeah, a lot of what we're, what I'm trying to teach people is we have built in learning software, right? Just like those neural chemicals I talked about that show up when we have powerful experiences, right? Just like those neural chemicals I talked about that show up when we have powerful

experiences, right? That's part of our learning software. The brain does pattern recognition. It automatically finds connections between things that are similar. So, this is a really weird example, but this top shelf from here to about here are books I haven't read. And they're all books on intuition or insight. They're new books. My next book is going to be on intuition and insight. And these are all the books that intuition and insight than are all science of intuition and insight

that I haven't read before. But I know by the time I'm done reading those books, I will have a new book. Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't know, I know my book is in there because I have a pattern recognition. I know that I've got all my learning that I've already done. I'm gonna learn new shit in that book.

My brain is gonna connect what I already know with the new shit and that's my book. And I know that. Like I don't, I'm not, you know, I used to be really twitchy about, where's my next idea I'm gonna come from? And now it's like, how bad, I'm not, you know, I used to be really twitchy about where's my next idea I'm going to come from. And now it's like, I'm like, 20 books. I read them, you know what I mean? That's my, like, and that kind of thing. And mind you, you know, I've been doing a lot of research and

do it for years to get to this point, but you get my point. Yeah, absolutely. I do. More from our guest, but first, if you were a sponsor. So when I heard about mid-mobiles, a $15 a month plan, I thought there had to be a catch. And then I tried out their service and noticed not the slightest difference in my quality of service or internet strength. So then why am I paying so much for my wireless service? Not anymore. It's mid-m Mint Mobile all the way. They have unlimited talk and text and high-speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with

any Mint Mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. And if you're not 100% satisfied, Mint Mobile has you covered with your seven day money back guarantee. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month and get the plan shipped to your door for free, go to mintmobile.com slash habits. That's mintmobile.com slash habits. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmile.com slash habits. Well, let's go back a little bit to the motivation piece because I think people always ask about, you know, how do I stay motivated? How do I get motivated? And, you know, I always, I always respect, you're the expert. I always say motivation is like a, you know, you can't rely on just motivation because it's like anything else, it gets weak after a while, you gotta rely on other things to get you there. And you talk about like, how does, what

is, how does grit play a part in all of this? And how do you, like, how does motivation work in the, in the grand scheme? Like, so people move from motivation to, you know, the learning, like, how does that whole thing, like kind of, but the process to move? Yeah, excellent. And I've got a tool, you're, let's do the, a bunch of what I'm going to talk about is online

for free and to think called the Passion recipe. If you go to the Passion recipe.com, that's, we turned it into the, because this motivation was such a problem for so many people. We turned it into, right? We turned it into an interactive worksheet, then we just were giving it away online for free because it's just every has this issue.

So this is not a simple answer, but the motivation always has to start with external motivation. And what the reason is this, the research is really clear that if you're interested in peak performance and or in performance improvement, let's say, now forget peak performance. You have to be going after the impossible. You just want to be better in the gym and it works. Right, right, right. Help me for Monday.

Find a bar for it. We'll get there. Look at that. But I'm Monday as my issue, right? If that's where you're at, let's totally find it. Um. Uh. We'll get there. We'll get there, but I'm Monday as my issue, right? If that's where you're at, let's talk about it. Yeah. Um, uh,

extrinsic matters because if we can't take care of basic safety and security needs, right? You don't know where your next meal is coming from. You can't pay your rent. It produces too much anxiety and it blocks performance, just all performance. And so the research is really clear, and it, but it's not a lot of money.

That's the crazy part about it. It's literally you need enough to make basic safety and security needs and a little left over for kind of recreation fun, but not much more. And what the research shows is that if you're trying to motivate productivity and performance improvement, like really simple stuff,

once you get above that money threshold, money isn't the biggest motivator, it starts to fade. So you need enough money to get in the game, and you can reduce your anxiety, but it's way less than most people think it is. And once that external motivation goes away, what becomes much more powerful is what is known as intrinsic motivators.

And there are five major ones, and they're designed to work together to be cultivated in a specific order in a specific way and designed to work in a sequence. And here's what they are. The first most basic foundational human motivator is curiosity. Curiosity is most basic motivator. Curiosity is designed to be built into passion.

In fact, when we say passion, biologically, all we're talking about is the intersection of multiple curiosities, right? Once you've located the intersection of, and this is what the passion recipe works, we will help you do, located the intersection of multiple periodosities and cultivated it to make sure it's really the right spot for you. You're starting to grow passion. Once you attach that to a cause that is greater than yourself

and outside of yourself, now you have purpose. So you've got a passion, you've got to find a bunch of your keyiocities, where do they intersect? And now what's a big problem in the world that I want to see solved? How does my passion connect to that problem? That's how you do that. Once you have purpose, what do you want? With the freedom to pursue that purpose, you need autonomy, right? And once you have the freedom to pursue your purpose, you need mastery, the skills to pursue that purpose. Once those things are set up, the next thing the system demands is goals. Where am I going?

Right, I've got all this stuff, I've got all this energy. Where am I going specifically? And it turns out the biology says, there are three levels of goals we need. Mission level goals for our life, high-hard goals, which are like one to five year goals, mission level goal. I want to be the world's greatest writer. High-hard goal, I want to write a book on cooking, I want to write a book on fitness, I want to write a book on boxing.

And then you need clear goals, daily to do this, and they all got to be fed in the same direction. And the back end of that is the question you asked. Grit. Grit is what you need when the motivation rungs out, and the motivation is you point it out. It only gets you so far. is what you need when the motivation runs out. And the motivation, as you pointed out, it only gets you so far. Now, what sets peak performers apart is just like peak performers stack fuel sources, right?

They always, they hydrate well, and they eat their vegetables, they eat their fruits, they get good protein, where they stack fuel sources. Peak performers stack internal fuel sources. You want curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Why?

Because it's hard here. Life is difficult. It's hard for all of us. And you need all the motivation you can get. And by the way, motivation also is one of these things people talk about passion and purpose and they're very mystical and sexy and and maybe they are right But from a performance standpoint It's a really simple equation in any situation. You don't have a hell of a lot to work with you got your attention

What am I gonna pay attention to do and what am I gonna ignore you got your action? What's the thing? I'm gonna do right that's about all you can bring to any situation. If you happen to bring your attention in your action, you do the same thing over and over again. What do you get? You get a habit. Now you get to perform the action right without having to think about it and with less energy. But that's like, that's pretty much the entire equation in whatever it is that we're trying to learn or do. And the thing that you're doing, the action you're performing, as you know, you can get better at it, you can improve, but it happens slowly over time based on who you are in the world and how well you learn and a whole bunch of other stuff and how well

the task fits your skills, et cetera, et cetera. Meaning, you can do some stuff there, but there's nothing fast that's going to happen there. Focus is where something fast can happen. That's why attention matter, or that's why intrinsic motivators matter. Why does curiosity matter? We get focused for free, right? Why does passion matter?

Way more fun. Think about romantic love as consider a passion, neurochemically, it's the same as any passion, the artist romantic love. When you're falling in love with somebody, you can't stop thinking about them. You can't stop paying attention to them and you're not exerting any effort for it. That's the big deal. Purpose is the same thing. It's more of that, right? And all these things, they sound, purpose sounds really altruistic and millennials and generation Z, they love to talk about their purpose and you get a lot of virtue and signal and all that stuff.

And I always point out, I'm like, you may be doing that for whatever reason, but from a performance standpoint, purpose is entirely selfish. purpose because I mean neurobiologically, pat curiosity is a little bit of dopamine and a little bit of norapidephyric. Both are focusing chemicals when they're in our system. We feel them as excitement. Dopamine is like excitement and pleasure and the desire to make meaning out of a situation. And norapidephyrd is much more super excitement, super like when we can't stop obsessing over somebody that's often nor up in effort. We think about that that's that kind of excitement. You put them together a little bit. You get curiosity. You crank that up. Now suddenly you've got passion. That's what passion is neurobiologically. It's just these two neurochemicals really cranked up. If you attach to it so they got side of

yourself you get nor up at effort end up being. You also get all what are called the pro-social chemicals. All the chemicals, the reward chemicals that underpin social bonding, oxytocin, serotonin, anandamine. These are all massively, doorphins, feel good drugs, endorphins underpin maternal bonding and friendships. And you get them when you have a purpose, you're going to help the world

Endorphins start showing up the most common endorphin in the body. These are internal opiates like morphine It's a hundred times more powerful than medical morphine. So like big pleasure drugs, right? Really rewarding pleasure drugs and I'm a question Please, okay, my question is I feel feel like I'm raising my hand, but do we all have, no, no, do we all have different levels and amounts of these chemicals? So that's why some of us are more curious and others. Some of us have more, like that guy who climbed Al Capitan, you know, the guy who went up there with nothing, he had no chemical to tell him, no fear in his body.

Like he didn't have that chemical to, like to kind of elicit the fear. He actually has Laura, and he produces Laura up in effron, but is a mig to the part of the brain, his danger detector. He's a lot, yeah, it is a lot less reactive than most people. But that's a cultivated thing. You can get produced. Now, was he born that way? You can get a less reactive

than Miguel Leth through meditation. That's one of the things you're doing. When people do mindfulness and respiration and meditation, you're set when you separate the gap between thought and feeling and become less reactive, neurobi meditation, you're set when you separate the gap between thought and feeling and become less reactive. Neurobiologically, you're literally making your amygdala less reactive. That's literally what is happening to your mindfulness. So was he born that way a little bit more than the average person?

Probably, yeah, probably true. Right. There's probably some neurobiology underneath there, but was it a learned skill? You have to remember that rock climbing and mindfulness are two activities that required intense focus on the task at hand and breathing. And so a lot of my early work in action sports, when I was actually the researchers I was working with,

I was working a lot with Dr. Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania. He was studying meditation in Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns. And we started to realize that the same focuses surfer brings to a wave, a meditator brings to a meditative experience. That was kind of one of the early bits of work we did together. They're very, very similar. That's what I mean by our biology is the same and the things are the same.

Yes, did Alex come in with less fear? He probably, you know what I mean? He's a little bit and but everybody's sort of got their thing as you know. You know what I mean? And you can train yourself. You can train your brain to a certain level, like, but how far can you train it, right? So like, yeah, you're saying meditation can help and, you know, some people, you know,

but do people at least, like, not everyone, like, no matter how much I train my brain, I'm not going to be a layered Hamilton or an Alex, you know, basically, no matter how much meditation I do, I'm not climbing that mountain without anything on me. You know what I mean? Like it's not gonna happen. So right, so everyone has levels. I have to tell you something. As a fitness person and as a rock climber,

I can absolutely look at you and tell you that I could teach you to climb and I can actually tell you I could teach you to climb at a level that you probably would be willing to free solo Like a five five or five six climb. I'm not like not like this happens all the time with climbers people come into climbing and I mean You start you just start learning to climb more and more without ropes He took it to the farthest extreme and so yes, can you yeah? Are you ever gonna climb my Alcapital

World? No, of course not. But could you get in the ring? Could you get in, could you actually start playing that game? Absolutely, absolutely. And in fact, one of the reasons I know this is, A, I can look at you, your thin, huge advantage with climbing. B, women have better lowers, because of how your hips are situated in your body, women tend to do better at climbing than men and learn it quicker. I mean, but don't you say also that you don't know you're good at something until you actually do it and see if you're good at it too, right? So I didn't say you were going to be a good climber. I just said I could get you to the point that you'd be willing to free solo comfortably.

My point is that what you think is impossible is like it's no, I mean, it's really not. Like I, you know, as a guy who's climbed for years and years and years, I've watched people coming into the sport and learn it and you'd be shocked. Really? Oh my God. Okay, so maybe I'll take you up on that. Maybe you can go to a climbing gym. Just go to a climbing gym in the line. I've actually done it with my kid and it's fun. I like it. But it's

indoors and I don't go that high. I go to maybe like 20 feet. Now we gotta get you a bigger climbing gym. Yeah. I think so. Exactly. You're in Atlanta. I gotta find you a climbing gym in the line. I'm in LA. I'm in LA. I'm in LA. Oh. Yeah. The glimy gym in LA sucks.

Oh, it does. Rocknacias, or I oops, I shouldn't say that, but yeah. It's an amonica, right? Yeah, exactly. I climb there. It's very, it's not a very good gym. No, it's small. It's very small.

I feel like a hero. I feel like it gives me confidence though, because I can get all the way up to the top and I feel like a superhero. I mean, if you me confidence though because I can get all the way up to the top and I feel like a superhero. I mean if you can climb in there, you could start bouldering and bouldering. I mean people bouldering all the time where there's 20 foot walls without ropes all the time and you know, I by the way, I'm terrified of heights, terrified of heights. Nobody ever had. I just didn't like being afraid. So I don't like being the feeling of, so I will go at anything that makes me feel afraid. I'll go at anyways, because I don't like feeling the fear.

And I was drawn to the rocks. Like they're beautiful. Like I wanted to have rock climbing is how you get to interact with rock faces and mountains and parts of nature that you don't get up close to otherwise. And that was really attractive to me. So I got over it. But it never,

like I never once was outside where I wasn't terrified. Really? And do you do free soloing to yourself? Like you go without the rope? I don't know. I'm older, but no, I won't free. I probably climbed a 40 foot wall without a rope at one point or another.

I don't think anything bigger than that. And I wouldn't do it now. Yeah, well, oh my gosh, that's so scary. Sorry, so I was going to say something. OK, so you're saying that you have to get, because we're jumping, but I really enjoy your book. I actually be honest with you, I really like all of your books. You've had a really stealing fire was good, the rise of Superman.

You've done, this is like, you've done very well. Your books are very good. I have to be, I'm not just saying that because you're on the podcast, I think you do a great job. Thank you. That's very sweet of you. It's not so. No, it's absolutely true.

And you can see how much research you do for crying out loud. I mean, like, you're, like, you know, like, you know this stuff, like the back of your hand, right? Like, you've been doing this for so long. Um, I do, you know, when I was doing professional magic as a little kid, there's lines in the book, right? Anything's easy with 10 years practice. And, you know, it turns out, peak performance,

I still not easy, but I've got, they took 30 years. But I got there, you know, I'm a slow learner without getting to remember. Yeah. I really am, boy, that. You know, I'm a slow learner, but I'll get there. I really am boy. That's a true statement. I'm a very slow learner. I like to joke, I'm routinely say about myself, is there is nothing here I won't eventually learn the hard way. I just won't stop.

I just won't stop, but I don't mind being bad and I don't mind doing it over and over and over and over and over again because I know fitness actually taught me this. I was 119 pounds coming out of high school and the same high days I am now. I was tiny, I'm an ectomorph, total ectomorph. Yeah, you are an necker. Right. Yeah. And I'm now 100, probably 55 pounds. And it's, you are? Where are you holding it in your toes? Because you don't look it.

Oh, yeah. Um, it's like I got there very, I so remember being in a gym in Sephirothus. I've been working out almost a decade. I was like 27 years old. And it was one of those big muscle gyms and severances good This guy walked there. He's like dude you just need to stick with it. You'll get there eventually Kill him Oh my god, I mean this were a fucking decade

By the way, it was also, that was also the moment in time I realized that I was probably doing it. Like, that was when I actually started really learning stuff about fitness also, because I was like, you know, I probably am doing something wrong. Like, if I've been doing this for 10 years and I'm getting that reaction, I'm probably like, I probably should design a program and really think about how I approach this and things like that. You do weightlifting and stuff like that, like, spring training. I've been, in fact, I lost it through skisies, but last year I got my bench back up to what it was

when I was in college when it was at its best. And I wanted to see if I could do it again at 53 and how long it would take. And my best was 225 seven times and I got to 225 four times. Okay. That's good. No, it's good. I'll probably, over the summer, I'll probably actually be able to hit it, but by the way, it took four years. Okay, but like you said, you're slow.

You're slow. That's what I mean, right? That's what I mean. But like one of the reasons I'm like, I personally doesn't scale. I never give advice what works for me. What isn't gonna work for you. I try to stay to the biology,

but I will also say, I am a terrible learner. I am a slow learner. And if I can do it, anybody can do it. Really? Yeah, I always think that. That was also where some of the learning stuff came from. Because if I can learn it, anybody can learn it. I didn't, I'm not an extraordinary intellect.

I've done way more reading than most people, but that's all I've done. I've just outread everybody. My brain can do a couple of things that other people's brains can't do But everybody's brain can do something that other people's brains can't do right? That's not like you can just read it Exactly, I like really almost I may slow Slow learner and all this stuff Wow, I mean, I'm surprised to hear that but I mean that that's kind of gives people some kind of

You know, it seems like you'd have to be able to comprehend all the information well too like you how that's what I'm surprised about I would think that could you read so much and you're able to Like explain in layman's terms quite easily that you're able to comprehend quite quickly terms quite easily that you're able to comprehend quite quickly. I'm not, but I'm willing to go for very long times. Most people are uncomfortable with uncertainty. They don't like not knowing and they don't like being bad at things. When you're a journalist, I mean, when you have to become a subject expert to write an article and you have to write the article to get paid and you have to get paid to pay your rent

You write you have to figure that shit out really fast Yeah, really really fast when you're young and hungry and coming up and I you know I um there was no fallback, is it you know what I mean? There was nothing else I was good at like I this had to work and And it had to be able to pay my bills and I had to learn a lot of subjects. There was no choice. I just started to realize that as long as I was willing to just be stupid, like just I'm just going to keep reading. I have a built-in pattern recognition system. That was the point you made earlier. This is what often people don't realize about reading is in the book I talk about the five books of stupid, right?

And it would I would often read five books to familiarize myself with the language of a subject and sort of like the broad overarching. Basically, you get to the point that I could start interviewing experts, right? I needed to know enough so I could ask good questions and it would take about five books, but I really don't think I would start comprehending some of these subjects till book four and Not everybody is willing. I think everybody's probably willing to read those five But they don't realize that they're eventually going to get it, right? They think the fact that they're super stupid and frustrated in book one and two is a life-sentence It's all that's going to stay that way, right? What they don't realize is as long as, you know, as long as you're not super anxious about it

because that'll block the learning, literally. Well that's what happens to most people. You get very anxious that you're not catching on. That's what also stops people from continuing. I think you're totally right. And like the only thing that's different, the feeling doesn't change. I'm just saying, you know, we say this a lot

in peak performance, um, your feelings don't always mean what you think they mean. And this is really true when it comes to peak performance. Um, in fact, learning, let's just learning the experience of learning, my, the, anybody's experience of learning is I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck. Oh, wow, I don't suck anymore, right? What the hell happened? Right. But like, that's learning for everybody. It doesn't matter. In fact, this is not my statement. This is my friend, Dr. Andrew Newman-Stamen. He's a neuroscientist. He's a Stanford-Bed

to some work with. He likes to say, and I think he's probably right about this, that one of the biggest differences between like top performers and everybody else is top performers No, it's always crawl walk run and everybody else goes man. I don't like crawling. I don't do crawl I don't even do walk. I want to start by jogging. How do I play a shortcut? Right, and they spend all this fricking time looking for a shortcuts that they can start jogging. And peak performers go, oh yeah, okay, there's another one of these. I'm gonna crawl, then I'm gonna walk, then I'm gonna run. And the crawl is this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. And the only, I think the only real difference is that peak performers understand that it's

not personal, that's sucking, and it's not you. And it's not a sign that you're not going to get better. It's literally you've overloaded the brain's working memory. You can only hold in the conscious mind four or five things at once and once you're trying to hold on to more of that. So if you're trying to learn something you're out there the fifth thing that you don't know, you're overloaded. You're brain is overloaded and you're feeling its frustration. This doesn't actually mean you're not learning. It just means you're feeling frustrated,

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I totally agree with that 100% and the people that I've met and I know and as friend also are friend of mine, they also, you're right, they start, they know it's the crawl walk run. They don't try to start by sprinting and running a marathon. But this is very similar to weight loss. People are like, I want to lose 100 pounds. They're not starting with walking around the block and losing one pound or two pounds a week. And so when you're not getting it, it becomes very debilitating, depressed, and you feel less than, because you're not getting

to zero to 60. The brain should be telling you, go to zero to one to two to three. So, yeah, I think that totally makes sense. And I also think, you said this about grit. You brought up grit earlier. And at this point, I wanna make about grit, and I think it's true, across the boards, and it's sort of in this sort of neighborhood, which is like when you're trying to learn how to be gritty, you need to learn two things. There's the actual, let's say you're trying

to get grittier in the gym, right? Or you're weight loss, and the grit is, I walked a half mile yesterday and tomorrow I'm going to walk, you know, a hundred more yards, right? Just, there's, you have to do that a hundred more yards every day where you have to do that. That's the grit practice. That's the actual, I'm getting physically grittier, but there's a second part to it and most people miss this, which is you have to believe that you have the reserves to walk that extra hundred yards.

And these are different things, and they're different processes, right? So it's not enough to do the thing over and over and over again. You have to all, so believe it, because they're different governors, I'll give you a simple example. Have you ever broken a bow doing a sport? I have, yes.

So as you know that the physical injury takes, however long it takes to heal six months or whatever, but the mental injury takes about a year and a half to heal, like there's a governor on your behavior, for about a year and a half, because your body doesn't want to give everything because it doesn't want to get hurt again. It just about a year, right?

You're scared and it's unconscious. There's nothing you can do. Like, as an access to what athletes, it's unbelievably frustrating. I would be as a skier. I'd be chasing world class athletes around and knowing that the reason I can't catch them is not because I broke a bone like two years ago and there's a governor on my speed and I can't get past it until I get used to being comfortable with speed again. There's nothing like that's just what it is. All these things work

that way, right? So there's there's a double step in there and we forget that the hard step is convincing ourselves. How do you do that? That's the that's the that's a million dollar question. All right. So I think and I don't because I don't think it's fancy. I think this one gets over complicated and I don't I by the way I don't know if I have this a hard one right I don't this is not an art of Bosnian question. I know. The Steven question so you're out you know. So it's a hard one but like I what I think is I always tell people we often don't trust our own history. So I talk a lot about invisible skills, right? We all have skills, we know what our skills are, but we all have invisible skills.

So the example I give in the book is, if you grew up in a crap household, your mom and dad were fighting all the time, and it was your job to defuse the argument, to make sure dad doesn't hurt mom or any of those situations, right? That's a bad situation that lots of kids grow up in. You have a skill.

You can defuse arguments. That's a real fricking skill you have. You can build on that. In fact, you take that into the real world. You're a mediator where you're, you know, there's three or four guys in my company. They're there because they stay cool no matter what, right? Boss Mad is out there losing his precious mind, but I got a couple of guys on my right or left

who they don't, they're Alex Honnold about business stuff. And right, and they don't react like that. Even when I'm losing, I'm like, we, we, we, right, because they grew up in environments like that. That's an invisible skill. I don't have that skill. That's a good point. We often don't trust our history with our skills, our strengths, or we don't notice it

that way. We often don't trust our history about when we've actually, like, how many times did you work out in a row before you thought you were pretty, right? Like, it probably went on for years before you were like, oh, wow, I'm actually pretty. Because I've been doing this freaking hard physical thing for years in a row. But when do you think the actual grit showed up? Biologically, after 28 days, after you laid down the habit, right?

And then three months in that habit was totally me automatized. That's when you actually have the grit, but you didn't believe it for three years. And that's because you don't trust your history. But you could have looked, if you would have stopped it four or five months and been like, well, I've been doing this thing every day

for five months, maybe I can kind of believe that I'm people of doing that. And it's not, it's like everything else, right? You're not gonna get the belief all at once. It's gonna be like the weight loss or everything else we're talking about. It's compound interest, but you have to notice, right? You just have to pay attention to, oh, wow. You know what?

I showed up every day and was a little more motivated than I, you know what I mean? That I've been that kind of stuff. And I think, so I don't have a magic pill here. I just have the, you know, awareness, awareness of of our own victories. And maybe pausing, I'm bad at celebrating victories. I'm on to the next thing and on to the next thing and on to the next thing. Right. And I've got, I've got, usually it's my best friend who's like, dude, you know what you just did? And I'd be like, no, but why don't you tell me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I like that also a lot of the way you said about compound interest. I think it's all about the compound interest too. Always, always what it is. Right. The hardest thing, I think the two hardest things about peak performance for people is the shit that's in Art of Impossible across the board, it's not sexy.

It's going to get nobody laid when they talk about it on a bar on Friday night. It's just not that way, right? Like the whiz-bang technologies are sexy or the substances that you can use to drop and, you know, those are sexy. Those will get you laid on Friday night. Talking about like how you actually develop grit by, well, okay, so I'm gonna walk 100 more feet than I walk yesterday.

I'm gonna the next day after that, I'm gonna walk it on, it's not sexy. Like what, like, and it sounds so dumb that it's really hard to even believe it'll work, right? Cause it's not those things. So we, there's a credibility problem, because we, especially in our high tech, WizBang, world, we expect it to be a lot fancier than it really is.

But you know what is sexy? Someone who has grit. Oh, yeah. And someone who is a peak performer. So it may not be sexy to get there, but once you get there, it's super sexy. Oh, yeah. I agree with that.

I agree with that. No, you are right about that. Right. And then I wanted to ask you something. One other thing I was going to, well, you talk a lot. I mean, I've seen a lot of your stuff and you have a whole company based on flow, right? What's your company called flow? A research collective. Oh, flow? A research collective.

Oh, yeah, flow research collective. Because you know, we did talk about the triggers to get you to flow. What are some of those things? How do we get ourselves into that flow state where we can learn faster, get into that? You know, how do we do that? I know you, I heard you talk once about gratitude.

And what I liked, and why I, why it kind of like stuck in my brain wasn't because you're saying, you know, I think you were talking about like, you write a gratitude journal in the morning. And you're not saying that because, you know, you're saying it's because of what the, the neurochemicals do to get you to that stuff. Yeah, so gratitude, this isn isn't a flow. Actually, so

World's of the expert on grad and neuroscience are gradiners glad Fox teaches at USC And we've done studies with Glenn. It's a name. I'm gonna write that down. Uh, Glenn Fox If you buy the way glenza just if you want an email might like if you want him on your podcast email my staff and ask for Glenn's like if you want him on your podcast, email my staff and ask for Glenn, Glenn, oh fuck, not that, yeah. We'll be two. I think you also mentioned someone that I read and I liked him, the Hoover minutes. He asleep, right?

Andrew, he's done some work on sleep. Okay, it's from that. He's a good guy in peak performance as well. So Glenn, we did some studies. We did find that people who have regular gratitude practices tend to have way more flow in their lives. So there's a correlation there and you are right. But when you're talking about... So, why is that? Why do people who have more gratitude for

practice have more flow in their life? Let me start here and then we'll answer that because we're not 100% I'm not on I'm gonna that's not that's an open question. We're not 100% on that answer, but gratitude works because you are the brain takes in a mass 11 million bits of information a second is what we take in from our senses. This is a guy named Marvin Zimmerman's work and consciousness, what you're aware of, is the largest anybody believes it is is 2,000 bits of information.

So there are some estimates that take it down to like 200 bits in terms of consciousness awareness. So 11 million bits of information come in for our senses and your reality is 2000 bits. So what does the brain have to do to make sense of all the crap that's pouring into it? It's got a sift, it's got a sword, it tries to tease apart the critical from the casual, right? And since the first order of business is always survival, fear gets privileged. When information moves into our brain, the first place it goes is basically it goes through our senses, it goes to the thalamus, which is a router, which sends it, and most of it goes from the thalamus to the amygdala, the danger detectors. Tell me if there's something scary in the environment

because the first order of business is keeping me alive. So our fears tend to filter almost everything in our world. Now, work out of Berkeley shows that we will take in nine negative bits of information for every positive bit that gets through. That's the standard ratio in the world we live in. So if we're taking an 11 million bits of information and this is a couple hundred and nine negative for everyone positive that gets through. This is a negativity bias. This is when psychologists

talk about a negativity bias. That's what they're talking about. This is and this is a natural bias that most humans have. When you do a gratitude practice, what happens is you'll start taking in less negative information. Because gratitude works in the same way that affirmations fail. At gratitude, affirmations fail because the brain has a great built-in bullshed detector. So if you look in the mirror and say, I am a millionaire, I'm a millionaire, a millionaire, and you work at Walmart, your brain goes, shut up, man, you work at Walmart, you ain't a millionaire, right? And demotivating, it's totally demotivating.

Gratitude works because you're writing down, I am so happy and grateful that my legs work this morning and I got out of bed, it's a real thing. And what you're telling your brain is, hey, brain, there's more things that are real and good in my life than you think. And so we take, we start taking in six negative for every positive. It gets through instead of nine and it tilts the ratio in our favor.

So what is the other thing that gets through novel information that helps us obtain our goals? The two biggest filters on reality are our fears and our goals, fears and goals shape almost everything. And when we can dial down fears, you increase novelty and it's novelty that's usually pointed at our goals. novelty and the experience of novelty when we experience novelty, the brain releases dopamine. Dopamine drives focus. Anything that drives focus drives flow.

Novelty is a flow trigger. So when this is why gratitude will increase flow, we think because it actually increases novelty and that leads to it. We also think that gratitude calms you down. And for a variety of other reasons, we have to do with different flow triggers. Less anxiety tends to lead to more flow. A little bit of anxiety, a little bit is good. That actually produces a little bit of the neurochemical norapideffin in prime as the brain for learning, too much of it terrible. So this is, it's a complicated relationship. But one of the things we advise people to do is if you can try to have a daily gratitude practice, five minutes a day, write down three things you're grateful for, turn one of them into a paragraph, or write down ten things you're

grateful for, and just really try to feel the gratitude. I, this is, you know, and I just, like, this is my to-do list for the day, these are the things I'm grateful for, right? And it's like, it's just a scrappy, but I don't have a fancy notebook. I'm gonna throw that away. Right, like this, I'm literally just reminding myself that there's good things in the world.

So like calm the fuck down and be a little less of an erotic to you than I normally am. Literally what I'm doing, right? Is not gonna bust me. I love it. Exactly, I'll, I totally get it. So then you throw that away. So you throw away that journal or whatever.

It's just like a notepad. And then you throw it away. You know, it literally works. You don't keep it for two years. You're just gonna throw that piece of the paper away. Yeah. I mean, literally all I find for me, I have to write down. And by the way, writing longhand is very useful.

There's all kinds of weird stuff about writing. But writing with gratitude, then, right longhand, it's better than a computer. I find if I write, I am having gravel for whatever it is that I'm going to work three times by the third time, because I'm debts. And you really have to feel it, you know what I mean? And I will, like, I just want to get the shit done.

I'm like, gratitude's on my daily list. And I'll be like, I am so happy and grateful that my legs work this morning. But if by the third time I'm like, oh yeah, my legs do work this morning. And I am actually really damn grateful that I could get out of bed and go take my dog for a walk up the mountain

and like that's legit. And right, but so that's how I do it. So like 30 sentences, it takes me about six minutes. And when it comes to tuning the nervous system, you gotta do something every day. Your choices are a five-minute gratitude practice, 11 to 20 minutes of mindfulness will do the same thing, or 20 to 40 minutes of exercise.

Pick one, but you gotta do one every day if you want to maintain like a nervous system that's calm enough to enable peak performance, that's like that's the thing that's in our boss. Well it's totally useful, right? And you hear a lot about you gotta do a grader who would practice mindfulness or like you don't. You gotta stay calm. Staying calm is the thing and the three easiest ways we know to calm down our gratitude mindfulness and exercise. And with exercise, unlike exercise for fitness where you have caloric goals or

strength goals or whatever, you want to exercise until it's quiet upstairs. What's technically known as exercise induced transient hypophrontality, it basically means I've worked out long enough that my brain's a little tired and I got a focus on The weightlifting or the treadmill or the whatever and I can't think about that horrible thing My spouse said to me at breakfast, right? Like that's that's all they're talking about Fitness exercises different thing but like we those are like these are three of the things positive psychology has discovered over the past 30 years Right like you don't have to do everything every day,

but you've got to calm down every day and these are the things you can do. No, I agree with you. Well, it's interesting that you say that because most people say you have to do all three. You've got to exercise, you've got to do your meditation practice, you've got to do your journaling. You're saying as long as you're doing one of those three,

you can calm down here and there this time. Here's what I tell people, is it general rule during regular life most days, if you're just good nothing crazy going on, do one, one of those three. If you're feeling more stressed, if we happen to be living under a pandemic, if there's massive political instability in Washington, you know what I mean? Like, yesterday, like, yesterday, like, oh my god.

Where Washington is exploding in the pan and the COVID death tolls higher than it's ever been. Yeah, maybe you want to do thrall three. On days like yesterday, you know, I was working out, I was meditating, you know, and, but yeah, I mean, that's like, yeah. Now, this is why I like working for the neurobiology. I mean, it's all, it's big fancy, where isn't all that stuff,

but honestly, you get, what is the point of all this stuff? The point of all this stuff is if I have too much norrap and effron, the neurochemical and cortisol, that's anxiety in my system, it blocks peak performance. When I say block peak performance, let me give you a really simple example. The more anxiety in your system, the more logical and linear your brain wants to be.

So when your anxious, your brain doesn't want creative solutions to problems, even though that's actually probably what you need, your brain says, oh, shit, you're in a danger environment, I can't give you options, I gotta give you simple. So the extreme example that everybody knows is fight or flight. We know if I'm in a life-threatening situation, your brain is going to reduce your choices to three. You can fight, you can freeze, or you can flee. But a little anxiety is more the same. It's a spectrum, right? Most things in the brain are spectrum of experience, not a thing that works just this way.

It works that way across the board. Less anxiety is still less creative problem solving, right? There's other things you pay other detriment for anxiety within terms of it. It'll start blocking learning and things along those lines as well. But literally, if you're trying to problem solve, the last thing you wanna be is anxious because it's literally blocking the very skill

you need to solve your problem. And since anxiety is a natural portion of being human, you, if you're interested in performing your best under, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or the rest of the day. So like, I'm really psyched. I did my gratitude practice, and then I hiked my dog. Wasn't, you know what I mean?

It wasn't, I didn't go crazy. I'm going skiing this afternoon. So it was just a little mellow, you know, take the guy for a stroll, but got a little quiet upstairs, and I did my gratitude work in yesterday. I think it was a hell of a day for everybody in the country. So I went a little few-duff,

so I wasn't a psychopath on your podcast. No, it was exactly, you weren't at all. In fact, I enjoy talking to you. I have another hour of conversation. I can talk to you just about the flow part, but I know I've had you forever here. So can you do me a favor? Will you come back on my podcast and we can discuss like we could be very specific because I know you have your fountain of information and we can like have just you know we can we can go through like each and every scale. I will come back on your podcast As many times as you want until you're like, okay, this dude is so fucking boring and he talks so much

All right, well, I'll hold you to that. That's for sure Let me ask you to let me ask you a couple of questions. Are you making daily to do this? Am I I'm trying these are I'm like you that's why I laugh. I have the same kind of chicken scratch as you have over there. I find, I'm the only way, I mean, I'm a big advocate of to do this at all, but without them working from home, there's no, how do you know what you're done? How do you know when you're done? How do you know it? So I, to me, a lot of that, like, when I see people really lost, and the first thing I'm always like is, okay, if you're really lost daily to do list.

Yeah, it's so true though. I live by them, and that's why I had to laugh, because I'm a neurotic Jew too, and I had to do anything to kind of, I exercise just to kind of calm my nervous system, right? And I had these to-do lists, because it makes me feel calm, too. When you, a to-do list is a flow, a clear goal list is a flow to-do. Yeah. And the reason is, is it lowers cognitive load.

Cognitive load, all the crap you're trying to think about at any one time, right? And when I lower cognitive load, I liberate more energy, you can use it for focus, that drives flow. So clear goals, let's say you do a couple other things, but they're big deal for flow, right? Clear, absolutely.

Like you want a higher flow lifestyle, that's the easiest place to start. And again, this is a not sexy hack. It's never gonna get you laid. And you're gonna be like, yeah, that can't learn, dude. You don't know what he's talking about, you don't mean to make a list. I don't know, we don't need to make a list. I don't know. I don't need to make a list.

Hello. I feel you, but you know, sorry, that's the science. It's so true. OK, the book is called The Art of Impossible. It comes out. What day is it come out? It comes out. Yeah.

January 9th. January 9th. Yeah. You're going to add this to the other list of best sellers on your list, I'm sure, because it's very good. You're going to add this to the other list of best sellers on your list, I'm sure, because it's very good. You're welcome. And you are going to come back and just wait till March.

Just let me get through the like, I don't want to march anyway. I don't worry. I wanted you, but not that much. You're good, but come on Come on, I want that I want that gratitude guy in it I do what I would love to get Heidi My god For me, I have no idea, but you can probably I'll bet bet she's wrapped. You could, I'll bet Heidi would like to have an agent.

Just go on IMDB. She's got mail. I heard that she lives in a chicken coop in the middle of God knows where. Oh no, she lives in Phrumph, Nevada, and her neighbor, she accidentally, this is so Heidi, she accidentally moved next to, like just like was moving there, the oldest hooker in Nevada, and the oldest hooker in Nevada runs a bird sanctuary, and had chickens everywhere. And Heidi, she was dying.

And Heidi is like, Heidi's everybody's Jewish mother. I mean, like that's to do her job. You kind of got to have the right, you got to have those skills kind of thing, so you can see that. So literally, like, what I was trying to do her job. You kinda gotta have the right, you gotta have those skills kind of thing. So you can see that. So literally, like what I was trying to do by article with Heidi, she was freaking out because like she's trying to care

for the direhooker next door and the 10,000 birds. And she doesn't know anything about animals. That was part of like, yeah. So, no. Oh my God, that's amazing. She's a big-hearted, really interesting woman. And people don't talk about this, but there's peak performance, there's peak performance.

Do you know what I mean? I mean, I got a chance recently to interview Remy Adelke, who is a former shot caller, street gang shot caller, then he became a US Navy seal. Then he became an actor Navy seal then he became a Actor and now he's directing and writing in Hollywood. I mean like he had the full arc But we were talking but I was like people don't talk about I wanted to know about skill transfer It's from the street into the seals and he was like nobody asked me those questions

I was like that's I like I grew up around drug dealers. I knew drug dealers. It's this is not an easy job It's really damn hard job. And on scary under bad conditions and a lot of risk and blah, blah, blah. And you can dislike the job. You could say it's illegal. You say it's wrong, but it's hard. And some people are better at it. And some people are worse at it.

And that's performance skills. And I'm just interested. Yeah. Absolutely. Totally. I don't care what you do. Absolutely. Totally. I've got that journaling thing. I can park my morality at the door for a couple hours and hear you out.

Oh, absolutely. I was going to say I would listen to that interview. I'm curious in your eyes. I'm curious. If you go to the Flow Research Collective, we have a podcast, Flow Research Collective, radio. And it's a Remi Adelky. it's one of our podcasts that we did. So people can find you, tell them what you can find you.

You can find the book, theartimpossible.com is the book. We talked about the Passion recipe, so, www.pasharesby.com. Here's to the else for your listeners. We talked about Flow, we didn't talk about how they can get more of it, but flowblocker.com. So there are six major blockers that stand between people in more flow. Every user has one that they're guilty of more than anything, and we built the diagnostic on around it, and that's free too. That's what I want you to come back on and talk.

We're going to have a whole podcast about this flow stuff, for sure. Yes, we will. They will. I'm going to be all podcasting with this flow stuff in your ping-ponging blocks because I got questions. That is a deal, Stephen. That's perfect. The book is called The Art of Impossible, Stephen Kotler. It's out now because by the time this podcast comes out and you've been great.

Thank you so much for coming on Habits and Husks. This is your moment, excuses we ain't having that The habits and hustle podcasts, power by happiness