Nuanced. - 117. Dr. Chris Bertram: How Flow States Enhance Performance & Ignites Creativity

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

What if you could tap into a state of mind where time distorts, creativity overflows, and optimal performance is the norm? This is the realm we explore with Dr. Chris Bertram, a leading authority in learning and performance optimization, as we unravel the enigma of flow states. Aaron and Chris dive headfirst into how this heightened state of consciousness influences athletes, creatives, and business executives alike, exploring its origins, characteristics, and the tantalizing way it bends our perception of time. Their discussion takes a fascinating turn as they examine the ways in which flow states could be the antidote to modern-day struggles like burnout, imbalanced work-life, and achieving peak performance under high-pressure environments.They delve into the science of mental preparation, emphasizing the need to build a skillset to effectively manage pressure. Chris and Aaron debate the potential of innovative technologies — like a drone controlled by the mind — to enhance performance further. And, introduce you to the concept of micro flow experiences; those fleeting moments of complete presence that can be a real game-changer in learning and performance. Finally, the two discuss how goal setting can fuel our passions and the role of technology in self-improvement. And, of course, they reinforce the importance of nurturing a growth mindset. So, if you're ready to navigate the fascinating terrain of human performance, flow states, and their potential for personal and professional growth, join them for this enlightening conversation! It’s time to unlock your potential and find your flow.Chapters:0:00 Introduction3:35 Flow States Explained10:17 How to Enter a Flow State 20:30 Micro Flow Experiences33:58 Mental Performance & Breathing Techniques45:36 Working with Canadian Golfer Nick Taylor 52:46 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder 58:05 Parkinson's Disease1:00:44 How to Get Motivated Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

This is The Bigger Than Me podcast. Here's your host, Aaron. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of The Bigger Than Me podcast. I am so excited to share this episode with you today. You are in for a real treat. My guest and I explore what flow states are, how to get into the zone, and how to utilize the space, regardless of your creative or athletic endeavor. We talk about golfers getting into the zone, snowboarders reaching their maximum potential.

and how you can too. My guest today is Dr. Chris Bertram. Chris, it's such a pleasure to sit down with you. I've been looking forward to this for so long. Would you mind introducing yourself for people who might not be acquainted with you? Sure, and great to be here, Aaron, thanks. It's really great to see how far you've come here with this project and been a follower since you first kicked it off.

And it's nice to finally be sitting here and doing it face-to-face. So thanks for having me. So, yeah, Chris Bertram, I work at the University of the Fraser Valley. I'm in the School of Kinesiology. I'm an associate professor there and teach and, you know, involved in research projects all around the idea of learning, what does learning look like on the inside, how can we optimize the conditions for learning and do it in such a way that when pressure shows up, that the skills that we've worked so hard to learn are free to be expressed in the

moment. So that's kind of what my real area of academic interest is. And then I, you know, somewhere along the way started stepping outside of the university teaching setting and research setting and outside of the laboratory and trying to take some of these concepts and apply them to people in some really high consequence environments, athletes, executives, other folks who are, you know, putting themselves out there and testing their skills under are really extreme conditions of pressure and started working with a lot of athletes sort of on a one-on-one basis and trying to help them get better, get better faster and do so in such a way that when, you know, the big moment shows up, the big game shows up that, you know,

they're able to perform at their best, at least increase the probability that that might happen. And then, yeah, a few other interesting twists and turns along the way started working at a company called Exos. And Exos has a big presence in the athlete world as well, which is fun and interesting. But we also are pretty heavily involved in corporate wellness and corporate fitness. And, you know, there's a big need these days, as you're probably well aware, in terms of, you know, epidemic levels of burnout and people really struggling at work with mental health and just work-life balance and that sort of a thing. So in that realm, it's taking some of the lessons of high performance sport and trying to apply that in a corporate setting. What are the lessons we know? What are the things

that we know work in high performance sport? And then you contrast that with what you see happening in corporate America, corporate Canada, and you see that there's a very large disconnect there. So we're trying to help them connect some of those dots too. So it's a bunch. It's a bunch of things. And then I've got a, you know, sort of a private coaching practice, too, where I work with one-on-one clients and a few athletes here and there and, you know, do some fun things, just kind of a one-on-one, too. You're a very busy person, a multi-talented individual. We have to start with flow states. Sure. From my understanding, flow was thought to be maybe a myth or like an idea very early on, and people questioned whether or not exist. You're a person who really

understands this area. Can you tell us what a flow states are? Sure. Well, you're right. I mean, I think for a long time, even in my world, it was a term that I didn't really get too close to because, you know, I've been around athletes for a real long time and you hear them talk about, you know, being in the zone. And I know that that's real. I've been in it myself and I've seen it on display many, many times. But the problem was for a long time, there just weren't any words even to describe it. So, you know, Aaron, if you've ever had an experience where you felt like you were in the zone or in flow, And then I asked you afterwards, like, what was the secret today? Like, why did it all go so well? The answer that you invariably would get is, I don't know, it just felt easy today. And there's not really much as an academic, as a researcher, that you can do with that, some experience that we're having that is ineffable. There are no words to describe it. And there certainly wasn't any real neuroscience that was going inside, looking inside the brains and bodies of people when these experiences.

show up. And so all of that started to change. And it changed first coming out of the psychology world and a person by the name of Mihai, Chixent Mihai, big name. He was the one who actually coined the term. So flow is a scientific term for these other words we hear, are these expressions like being in the zone or runners high or that sort of a thing. So flow as Chixenmihai and now the scientific field of flow defines it as sort of this higher possibility space of human performance and the human experience. So it's where we both tend to perform at our very best, but it's also where we tend to feel our very best. So the lived experience of being in flow is very much associated with happiness. Chikent Mihai wasn't actually really

interested in, at first at least interested in athletes or creatives or artists. He was interested in just everyday people and what are the things that underpin happiness and what he found along the way was flow because when he would ask people, when you're at your very best, what's that like? And people would say things like, well, when I'm speaking, it seems like one idea just flows into the next or if it's a movement context like an athlete or a dancer, it's like one action just seamlessly flows into the next. And that word kept showing up. And that's sort of the origins of the term flow. And so he characterized all of these things that happened to us. And it's the same, no matter if you're an athlete or if you're an artist or if you're an assembly line worker,

when people feel that feeling show up, the same kinds of experiences happen. Things like time passes very, very strangely. Sometimes, you know, an hour goes by. It feels like five minutes, right? sometimes the opposite of that happens and time really opens up and expands so there's this weird perception of time that happens in flow there's a sort of a dropping of our sense of self or our ego we feel connection with people or with an instrument right there's like not self and other but there's this you know feeling of connection that emerges there and there's sort of like this you know feeling of control that we have so it's not easy and it's it can be high risk and high stress but All through that, there's a sense that we have the skill to manage the challenge that is in front of us.

And so through all of those things, he defined what the characteristics were of flow. And then the really cool stuff, to me, at least started happening maybe 15, 20 years ago when neuroimaging technology started showing up and being used outside of more traditional medical contexts. And you put freestyle rappers into fMRI and watch what happens when they start to freestyle. as opposed to when they recite memorized lyrics and very different things start happening in the brain. And so then it was now we can look inside the human being inside the mind and body of people when they're in flow and you start to see the same kinds of things show up.

So it's part lived experience, but sort of underneath that lived experience are all these interesting neurobiological phenomena that are at work that are giving rise to these interesting perceptions that we're having. If I'm not mistaken, often you put in a lot of work prior. So this goal of kind of just ending up in a flow state, it doesn't happen by accident.

There's effort that goes in before it. And as a fan of UFC fighters, our understanding is that they work incredibly hard. And then they want to get into the state where they're just an active participant in a process where they're not forcing anything. They're just, they're feeling themselves in that moment. But there's time that goes into it before. And so it seems like that's a necessary. element. Am I mistaken? No, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think in order for people at that level, so UFC fighters or professional athletes of any kind, yeah, in order to show up on

fight day or game day and to be able to express all of the skills that you've worked so hard on in the gym or wherever you train, it does necessarily require that we put in that work, right? There is training, there is practice, right? You have to grind to get your skills to a place where you want them to be. And then you hope, at least this is traditionally the way it was, that when the moment arrives, that you're able to find some element of flow and things start to connect.

But I would say prior to maybe five or ten years ago, that was kind of still seen as a mystical type of experience, right? Where sometimes it happens and all the stars align, and, you know, the fairy dust gets sprinkled on, and flow arrives and everything feels great and you do your best. But understanding that there are these internal mechanisms, now that we understand that there are these internal mechanisms that are happening inside the brain and the body when people get into flow,

the game now, they're really fun stuff in sports science to me and just in human biology to me now is understanding that there are ways you can trigger these mechanisms with intention so that you can increase the probability that something like flow might show up more predictably, flow on demand instead of flow by accident. Do you feel like there is still a piece of it that remains by chance and how much of that do you think still exists? How close are we to being able to reliably hit that button? I think we're a lot closer than we were even five years ago.

And there's some really, really interesting work going on in this field, both in the psychological sciences and in the neurosciences. And I think we are at a point where we can, like, for example, we have identified that there is probably anywhere between about 17 and 24, what are called flow triggers, things that you can do in the environment are things that you can do to sort of change your own internal environment that can help set the preconditions for flow. And you can do that in advance. So, for example, a lot of what I talk about with athletes is about, you know, how are you

warming up before you go out to perform? Because everybody in sport knows the concept of getting warmed up. But that term has always been kind of exclusively about getting your body warm, you know, making sure that your muscles are warmed up and that you're, you know, loose and agile and activate it. But the idea that we can actually warm up our mind for doing big. scary, dangerous, hard things is new. And I think it's a really exciting place. And that goes well beyond the world of athletics, right? If you're a business person and you're walking into a

big meeting and you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed out, what can you do there? How do you prepare yourself for those big moments? How do you prepare yourself for a podcast? There are things that we know work in this domain. And so to me, I think we're certainly a lot further along the way of sort of helping to build up. Like, we're not at a level certainly where you could say that this is 100% likely going to drop you into flow. But what I see it as is increasing the probability by doing these things before or during events that you can do to help increase the probability that it might show up. I think we're getting pretty good at that. To me, what you're describing, I don't know if you watch Harry Potter, but I think of that golden snitch. And you don't always get it.

And there's almost a beauty to the fact that it's something you reach for, but you can't always guarantee and hit a button. Because if it were, then you wouldn't have the experience or the recognition of the value of the experience that you get when you're able to go, like, I got it this time. Like, it's almost like a gift. Yeah. That I have seen the Harry Potter movies. And that snitch that you're talking about, I actually have a piece of technology that kind of resembles what that thing does. it's a drone that you can fly with your mind. So I attach an electrode onto the front of your head.

And then when we go through some strategies and what happens is when the person shifts their brainwave patterns and there's a very stereotypical brainwave pattern we know that shows up when people get into flow, you can do that on purpose. And as people start to get better at it, what happens is it sends a little signal through an app. and then all of a sudden this little helicopter drone starts to fly, and they're legitimately flying what looks sort of like a snitch in mid-air. And it gives them immediate feedback that they actually have this ability to shift their state of mind in real time, and then they can control it, which is really cool and powerful for people. But the other part about it is the part about, like, the chase part that you're talking about,

that's a strategy that we know doesn't really work. There's this really interesting thing that happens. I think where, you know, you have to, you almost have to not care. Like there's a, there's a surrender element to this where you have to like do the work and you have to sort of prepare yourself for it. But in the moment, you kind of have to drop back and let go of the ego side and like, I'm going to get that thing. That's when it tends to show up more frequently.

So I have this great T-shirt that kind of describes this. I could have worn it today, but it's got discipline in one circle. and surrender in the other circle and in the crossover of that Venn diagram is flow. Right. Yeah. There's something beautiful about that experience of choosing to once you've gotten to that height

because for so many of the athletes you're describing, this is the difference between first place and second place. This is the difference between a gold medal and not reaching that potential on those bad days. I just watched a UFC fighter say, I just didn't have it today. And like the consequences are you lose half your purse. You've moved down in the rankings.

your likelihood of ever getting a UFC championship again goes down. Like all this adversity arises the second you lose and to just not show up on a day, is that hard to watch people go through and know that they're capable. The potential is there, but they didn't get to display it. Yeah, that expression of I just didn't have it today, that's the whole thing I'm trying to get closer to. My first question, Buell, why not? Were you trained physically?

Did you do the work in advance? and certainly the answer would have been yes you would hope and why when the day showed up did you not quote unquote have it so those are the things that I think we can make real progress on and we can make real progress on is helping because it sounds to me what happened in that particular situation was something between the ears from the neck up right so yeah the difference between wins and losses in the UFC, the difference between gold medals and silver medals. At that level, what you're talking about is the mental game. And for the most part, there's exceptions to that, but for the most part at that level, at the elite level, winning and losing

boils down to who can manage the pressure the best. And that, generally speaking, is a process that's going on between your ears. Does pressure create diamonds? Ah, that's a good question. Yes, it does. does, but it doesn't always. I mean, I think pressure can be an incredible tool to create really high-level performances if we manage it properly. And I'll tell you what I'll give you an example from a world that I spend a lot of time on, which is the golf world. So when, let's say, I know that this happens, by the way, I've talked to golfers and they have caddies that walk around with them and they confer and make decisions together.

And if, let's say, the golfers, you know, getting close to the lead or maybe they're in the lead and there's a couple of holes left to play and the pressure now is starting to ratchet up, well, one of the things that happens when we're under pressure is that we get a lot of adrenaline released into our systems, right? And adrenaline does a couple of things that are really interesting. Number one is it really heightens focus of the mind, right? It can get this very locked into what's happening in the here and now. It's important.

But it also drives a lot of energy into the body. Like it shunts blood away from your stomach where it might have been digesting food. And now all of a sudden it's out in your musculature. And you've got all this energy pumping through your veins. And so the thing that happens to people when they get under pressure in the case of golf is, you know, if they have an eight iron that might normally go 160 yards, say, now they're pumped full of adrenaline in that club. will go 190 yards and all of a sudden they've missed their target by 30 yards. This happens. And so a lot of times what caddies will do is secretly tell the player the wrong yardage

so that they will try to factor in what adrenaline might do to the result of the shot, unbeknownst to the person who's actually hitting this shot. I think that's not a great strategy. To me, the better strategy is to start to understand what pressure does. start to build up some awareness of what adrenaline feels like when it shows up in big, heavy doses. Understand what it's doing to. Notice what it's doing to your mind and to your body.

And then try to use tools to push back a little bit on that signal or use it, right? So it's a long-winded answer to your question. Pressure is one of certainly the preconditions, I think, for high performance, but it can go too far. There is this kind of like, you know, Goldilocks effect there where you definitely want to have some and the more you can manage, I think, the better. But if it tips too far into like hyperfocus or focusing on the wrong things and that, you know, that energy in the body starts to turn into jitters or to, you know, feeling like the butterflies now turn into nausea. Like that happens too. Adrenaline has an effect on the digestive system.

that's when it's gone too far and it's no longer making diamonds. You talked about how you can get flow in different states. It doesn't necessarily have to be athletic. And I think of potentially listeners who don't run or don't have these experiences if they're able to get it through reading. Do you think there's a difference between the quality of flow of an athlete versus somebody who's in an artistic flow?

Do you think the experiences are different or are they similar? Yeah. Really interesting question. First of all, the experience itself, and this goes back to that person, Chik Sampi, that I talked about earlier, what he was able to describe is that no matter what you're doing, if you're an athlete, if you're an artist, if you're an, you know, an everyday person just, you know, getting up and going to work, when you feel your best and when you feel that come around, the same, like, eight or nine characteristics tend to show up. But the other really cool thing that Chik Sampi figured out is that flow is not just one thing. So, yes, when we hear about flow, we tend to think about gold medals. We tend to think about innovative breakthroughs and cool artistic expression come to life and all of that. That's true.

At flow at the decibel level turned all the way to 10. But flow can exist in more subtle forms. The term for this is microflow experiences where you might feel some of the characteristics show up, but in a more subtle way. So, you know, like we're having a really good discussion here. And, you know, I look at the clock on the wall and I see a half an hour has already gone by. This is a version of a flow experience. If you get in a car and you drive for two hours and it's like, whoa, where did that time go? It's a version of it.

People play video games and lose five, six hours. It's a version of flow. But it's at some level on this spectrum. And the really interesting thing there is that I think people undervalue those micro- flow experiences because it doesn't feel as sort of earth shattering as the big peak moments of life, which are like the peak flow experiences. There's so much that can be gained from these microflow type experiences. And those are ones that are around us all of the time. And I'll tell you, this was actually my introduction. I said, you know, for a lot of years, I kind of resisted the idea

of, you know, flow from a scientific perspective until I actually read a paper once where it was a learning study and it was they the title had something to do with flow intervention and you know escalated rates of learning and what they did was they had this flow intervention in one of the groups and the study and the other control group had nothing and then they both were challenged with a learning task and it turns out the group that had the flow intervention learned the task either twice as fast and up to five times as fast as the control group did and literally when I read that study, I thought that's probably not real because this is the world I live in. This is the kind of research I do. And when you get tiny little learning effects because

of some thing you did or some coaching thing you did, you celebrate it if it's statistically significant. But I can tell you it's never double. And it's certainly never five times the rate that the control group is learning at. And so I dug into it a little bit. And it turns out all this intervention was, was using a bit of technology that quiets down a part of the brain called the frontal lobes. Your front here handles all the executive functioning. It's our sort of conscious thinking brain. When you quiet that down, that's where this effect showed up. And I've had this done to me. I've used this technology. And you don't even notice anything different in your kind of lived experience. It's so subtle that you don't even notice the difference. And yet,

look at these learning effects that are going on that to me is very very powerful and says that there is much that we can gain from flow experiences even when they're at these subtle even sometimes subconscious levels is that the surrendering you're describing because i think of your prefrontal cortex as being the part that wants to make sure everything's done properly and get controlled over everything having this part of your mind quiet down is that is that It's a huge part of it. Part of that surrendering is sort of letting go of like the fear, letting go of the ego of what's going to be the result, right?

So much of it is absolutely that. And there's actually a term for this. One of those mechanisms I talked about earlier that we know shows up when flow comes around is this quieting of the prefrontal cortex. And the name for it, if you want to know, it's called transient hypofrontality. It just means temporarily the frontal lobes of your brain are selectively deactivating. So this part of our brain that we walk around with and we use all the time that we think

is so important. And it is in many cases. But it was evolved in many ways for survival. Like we use, like human beings have very highly evolved frontal loaves, right? They're bigger than most animals. And part of it is that we can, you know, look at a situation and remember from the past whether that was a good thing for us or not a good thing for us, right? That's a very useful survival skill.

Or we can project into the future. Like if you look outside and you see that the leaves on the trees are starting to change color, you know that maybe falls coming and that maybe we should put away some food because we know from past experience that the weather is going to change. That's a very human thing, right? Now, that's your frontal lobes doing what they were designed to do, survival. that is not what you need in high performance, because as soon as you're thinking about the past and maybe what's gone wrong in the past, or whether you're thinking about the outcome of what

you're trying to achieve in this moment, whenever we start doing this time travel, we are losing the present moment and we are back in time or we are thinking ahead. If you think about performance anxiety, what is it? You think about anxiety generally, what is it? It's either pulling the past into the present or projecting into the future what might or might not happen. The thing that happens to us when we get into flow is this actual mechanism that allows us to time travel goes quiet. And we just lose the basic capacity to time travel. So what are you left with?

Right here, right now. And in the present is where all the magic happens, right? So that's, I guess, a level of the surrendering that goes on. it's just letting go of your attachment to the things that have happened before and the things that have happened and might happen in the future. First, I have to say you are a very eloquent speaker when it comes to this topic, but the piece that I'm thinking of is there are many people who don't have a passion, who don't do things that they love, who don't have something they're pouring themselves into where they're

able to do this. So they likely don't experience this opportunity, this moment of almost serenity where you're at peace with the past and present and the future and you're just a willing participant. How do you feel? Do you feel maybe sorrow for individuals who don't know what this is like and who are constantly worried about the past and worried about the future and don't get this moment? As someone who is an expert in it, I'm just curious just to what do you think? Yeah, I mean, look, I think it is a bit sad that a lot of people do kind of get stuck in

these ruts where they just can't really be connected. in the here and now. And look, we all struggle with it. Yeah, am I an expert on this? Sure. Do I get lost in my phone? Yeah. Do I get lost in ruminating thoughts about what might happen tomorrow? Yeah, I do. But the optimistic side of me knows that there are skills, there are tools you can use and there are skills you can practice that can help you to get better at this. And I kind of see that as my quest right now is to help people understand that you're not powerless over your state of mind or your state of body in a moment. There are things that you can do to change that. And yes, there are things. There are things you can do through talk therapy that can work. But there are all these other interesting

mind body tools that you can use that can in an instant change your state of mind and put it into a place that's more advantageous for whatever it is you're trying to do, whether that be get yourself worked up and into a place of high performance, or maybe that's to calm yourself down after a bout of work or a long day or a stressful moment when you're trying to get to sleep at night. How do you calm the nervous system down there? There are strategies and tools that we know work. This is based in really good evidence now. I know that every once in while I start to talk, it starts to sound like, am I just talking about new age, like kind of woo ideas? No, I'm not. I'm an academic first and foremost. I don't ever talk to people about things that haven't

sort of passed through that filter of evidence first. So I'm really optimistic that there are things that people can do. And one of the first things I would say, and I think we kind of lose this capacity. I think as we get older too, you know, kids are running around playing and basically in some version of flow all the time. Their frontal lobes that we're talking about, they're not even fully connected yet. They don't get fully connected until you're about 25. So you're kind of in this hypofrontal state most of the time. But then it locks in at about 25. And then that process needs to become a bit more effortful and intentional. But I think if you can connect to things that you know give you pleasure, and that's different for everybody, if you can just

carve out a bit of time for those things that give you that sense of timelessness and selflessness and control and do that with intention and build that into your life where you can, you're going to feel better every day. And then you can start to craft a life around that. And look, we can all have the jobs that give us these high flow experiences. I'm not, you know, so ignorant to say that I know that there aren't people who do jobs that they don't love. But they have the rest of their time, right?

And there's even things you can do at work to make that time go. once you start to work on these skills, you can change even your experience with your job, even if you don't love it. So, yeah, it does. I think there is so much room for optimism here. I think we're at a new frontier in how we think about mental performance. And I don't just say that in the athlete context. I think of that in terms of every human being alive.

I really love that because I think so many people feel disconnected from their bodies and their minds. And there's an idea here that you can make that connection again and you don't have to be a high performance athlete, that there's an opportunity to enjoy moments again and that you can start to chase a craft and that's really what this 21st century, the internet gives you access to, is different voices and different ideas that encourage you to kind of access your full potential, even if it's on the side, even if it's a side hustle or a side passion, do you have any concerns about it becoming a job?

So for like many artists I think of, they worry about it becoming the work and then them losing that passion. A lot of rappers I listen to, they go, I started this just for a love of the game, a love of the music. Now it's my job. Now it's my business to talk about my failings and shortcomings. And it loses a little bit of the gusto. Yeah. But like high performance athletes are still able to find that flow despite it. Do you think making it a job, is it all a danger? I do in a way. I mean, I think this gets into a conversation about motivation and what's driving you every day. And again, I'm not a psychologist. I sort of have to play one on TV sometimes, but that's not my training. But I understand the world of motivation at a theoretical level.

And it basically, it boils down to this. And this is going to be oversimplified. So if you're a motivational expert out there, forgive me. But basically, there's a couple of ways and things that can motivate us. Either there are things that are really intrinsic to us, the things that connect us to our core values or passions, right, is are we doing it just because we love it? There's a word for that in the flow world. It's called autotelic. It means that we want to be in flow just because it feels so damn good to be there. It's not because it's going to give us rewards or fame or any of the other extrinsic motivators, right? We do it because it's connecting to something that feels great within us or aligns with our values. And I think once you get to a certain point, it is very,

it's tempting and it's a bit slippery to say, oh, there's a big financial upside to this, or there's, I'm getting recognized for that thing. And maybe I need to do it because somebody else wants me to do it, because maybe that's going to help their financial upside. All of those things are the trappings of success. And yes, they can pull you away from those, intrinsic drivers, doing it for the love of it or because it makes you feel great or connected to your passion. So I think it's worth doing an exercise every once in a while where you do a bit of a motivational exploration. And, you know, like psychologists do this work and they try to connect you to your why. I mean, I hear that a lot. Why are you doing this at its core? What is the thing

that you're doing this for? And if you can remind yourself of that every once in a while, I think it can help give you sort of a more sustainable fuel source. I just watched with my kids for the second time, the last dance, Michael Jordan, right? He was a master at finding external, extrinsic motivators. That person, that person, you know, the illness that I had, I'm going to overcome this thing, this force that's affecting me, right? And he did that to great success. I don't think all people can do that. It's a very hot burning motivator, but it tends to burn out fairly quickly and then you have to find something else to replace it. I think a more durable fuel source that you can use over the long haul is connecting it to something inside of you that's really

powerful and meaningful like a passion or like your values or like something that just feels great, like flow. I'm curious, you've mentioned to one individual who's very prominent. I'm thinking of David Goggins, Cameron Haynes, Jocco Willink, who have kind of demonstrated the mentality that you can have that's out there. Now, a lot of people immediately go, you don't have to be David Goggins, but he demonstrates to us. He reminds us what our mind is capable of. And I'm just curious, when you look out into the world of mental performance, who are

some of the people you admire? Yeah. Well, I certainly admire David Guggins, and I certainly admire people like Jocco Willink and their ability to use what I kind of categorize is top-down mental performance. strategies like Goggins is just you're just going to do this. You're just going to tell yourself you're going to do this and you're going to think your way into discipline, right? And Jocko's kind of the same approach, right? Just be disciplined. Just get yourself into that place, make a decision in advance that this is what you're going to do and then stop questioning from

that point on. That's cool. And that's really, it's amazing that a human being can actually walk that walk and those two people do that by the way like David Goggins is not a joke that's what he actually does and but I also think that that's not everybody right and so when it comes to you know how do you find the strength to you know get yourself out of bed and to do something positive for yourself and how do you how do you then learn to shut that off at the end of the day I think having the right mindset is really important. And when I think of mindset, I'm thinking very specifically about that word through the lens of Carol Dweck and the growth mindset idea, right? You see obstacles as opportunities and you see failures as opportunities to learn, right?

That's a mindset. And that really is a necessary component. It's a really helpful component to it. but I don't think for everybody it's everything. So, yes, try when you're going to go out and do something really hard or challenging to have the mindset that no matter what happens, you're going to learn. Okay? That's good, right? But beyond that, when you start to bump into your own inner resistance or fear starts to show up, right, depending on what it is you're doing or, you know, anxiety starts to show up, what can you do in those moments to overcome it?

And sometimes reminding yourself to be growth mindset oriented is good. But to me, mental performance should be about more than using this side of your brain to talk down that side of your brain, right? Trying to use one thought to, you know, take the power away from another thought doesn't always work in my experience. It is one tool. But to me, that's where things like how we breathe, how you're using your eyes in a given moment, all of these things that you can do in real time to shift your state of mind and body that don't require you having to have this inner wrestling match inside your own head. The more tools you can get, the better. So when the moment shows up and you try one, it doesn't work. What else have you got?

So this is about building a quiver of mental performance skills that you can draw upon, hopefully, whenever the, you know, the moment arises. Breathing is a really interesting one because you're able to, we've realized that we're able to almost control our anxiousness through calming the breath. Sure. There's whole approaches you can have when you're going for a run that allow you to run farther. And like, what are your thoughts on how breathing interacts with our whole physiology? Yeah. I mean, it is, to me, it's one of the more powerful tools that we have access to at all times that can very readily change your inner real estate. So, for example, every single time you inhale, your heart rate goes up. Every single time. Every time you exhale, your heart rate goes down. And so there are all sorts of breathwork strategies out there. days there's things like 4-7-8 breathing and box breathing and Wim Hof breathing and all these other

techniques, right? They all have a place, but they're all based on this, you know, sort of one simple concept that if I inhale for a longer period of time, my heart rate is going to go up over a longer period of time. So if I'm feeling tired and I want to activate and become more alert, I can accentuate the inhale portion of my breath. It stimulates this part of your nervous system called your sympathetic nervous system, which is sort of your fight. and flight response, right? So every time you inhale, you get a little bit of activation there. Now, every time you exhale, you activate what's called your parasympathetic nervous system and everything starts to come down. So you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed in a

moment. A breathing strategy of like quick inhale, really long exhale is going to push back on that stress response and it happens. So what does that do? It changes your state of mind because adrenaline and the stress response have an effect up here in your head, but it also has an impact on what's happening in your body. Like this idea of mind and body connection, again, it almost sounds a bit new agey, I think, to some people, but there is just no doubting anymore with what we know about neuroscience that there is a two-way bidirectional communication between mind and body. So what you think can affect what your body is doing. There are many really interesting studies about this.

Think that a milkshake is full of a lot of calories versus one that has very few calories and your internal response with your insulin response will change. Just based on what you think about what is in that. your physiology changes because of your thought patterns and the opposite is true how you breathe using your body can change your mind in an instant too and those are just two examples of it but yes in a nutshell you know in moments where you want to be in a different headspace maybe you're too amped up and you need to dial it back or maybe you're feeling underamped and you just feel like you want to get up for something important. or you want to get up for that run, you can breathe your way into that. At least you can set the stage for it by changing your basic breathing pattern. So it's not just, you know, the old advice of take a deep breath, but there are some very conscious breathing patterns you can use to change the state of your mind and the state

of your body immediately every time. One of the areas that I find really admirable about you is that you started from the other side. You started skeptical on this idea of flow. And the research moved your position. And in a time where the idea of science gets challenged and that there is one scientific understanding, the idea that it's a journey is what I've always loved about it and that you face information that you may disagree with. You dig deeper. And then you go, okay, you know what?

The information is coming true. I'm just curious as to what your perspective is on this idea of science and being able to learn and take in information. Some data is not good. Some data is good. You gather it together and you get a. deeper understanding and you sometimes move your position. Sure. Well, I think that comes from the training. So when you, you know, I was in school for 10 years, did a bachelor's degree, did a master's degree, did a postdoc, did a PhD, all of it, right? I went the whole distance. And

scientific training really is about becoming skeptical, right? It's it's about training skepticism and always trying to ask like the question is, what experiment can I do that will disprove my hypothesis? That's your starting point in science? You have an idea, you think, well, this would be a really good idea. The first thing you do is what experiment could I do to disprove my hypothesis? That's the scientific, and then you're rigorous about the methodology underneath it. And then you try to look at your data in an impartial way and try to see what story is in there. And so the whole process of science, the whole scientific method is about this overcoming skepticism. And doing everything you can to prove yourself wrong first.

So if you get to a point where it's like, I couldn't figure out a way to disprove this, I guess there must be something to it, right? And then as you do that repeatedly and you do that and other people start to replicate what you've done and the same results show up, then you can start to say with a bit of confidence that this is something.

There is a there there, right? Doesn't mean that there won't be a study that maybe challenges it. You have to take that on board, too. But I think the issue that we see so often these days is you've got a mountain of evidence over here. And then you've got the challenging counter argument over here. And maybe there's one or two of those. And somehow we equate those, right? Because they get amplified through social media or somebody on some podcast shines a light on this thing, right?

The thing that we have to be mindful of, and I think this is incredibly. incumbent upon us as scientists is to communicate and translate this evidence better for the general population because there is a fundamental difference between 20 years and 20,000 studies and one random study or five random studies. You have to weigh the balance of evidence. And science means never having to say you're certain, by the way. That's one of my stats prof at UBC had that shirt and I love that but I think it also can take people into this world of well just there's no truth anymore like I've heard it said we live now in a post truth world and I that drives me insane I think what we need to do is just learn that the process of science is built on skepticism

and we're not saying facts or proof hardly ever unless you're talking about mathematical proofs what you're talking about is the balance of evidence those are the things that we need to guide our decisions, and we have to be willing to stand up and to put in the proper place what, you know, one or two things that are contrary to the bulk of evidence might say. That's what I think of when you're writing a good paper. A good paper doesn't come when you say, I'm going to show that this is true. And then you go and find all the information that demonstrates it's true. You usually start in the best case scenario with a question. I want to understand, and that's what your journey was. This sounds a little maybe woo-woo, it

doesn't sound accurate, and I'm going to go investigate, and I'm going to go try and understand, I'm going to ask the question, and then the evidence is going to present itself, and I'm not going to look with what reaffirms what I already thought. I'm going to be open-minded and read and look at the methodology, which is why I think that's one of the most crucial things good universities educate people on is the methodology. That's the meat of the paper. It's not the introduction. It's not all the things they accomplished. It's how did you conduct this study? Is it accurate? Is it reliable. Did you do it in an unbiased way? And that's where it's like the truth starts to come out. But I have to ask about Nick Taylor, the Canadian Open, first Canadian to win it since

1954. Can you talk about your work with him? Sure. Yeah. So Nick Taylor, he grew up in Abbotsford for the most part. I met him probably the first time when he was leaving high school and at that point still had some aspirations about getting him to come and play at the University of the Fraser Valley. But that was a pipe dream. Everybody knew Nick was going on to some big NCAA program. And of course he did. He went to the University of Washington and had great success there. And we kept in touch over the years.

And, you know, when he turned pro, he had some early struggles trying to make his way on to the PGA tour. And it was a bit of a longer road than I think a lot of people saw for him. And, you know, we would chat here and there, and we just kind of built up a bit of a friendship over the ears. And then over time, that started to formalize into more of a professional relationship where I was trying to take, you know, a lot of the things that we've talked about here today. How do you really sharpen these skills of mental performance and do it in such a way that shows up when big pressure moments arrive? And so, you know, somewhere along the way, especially in the last year, we've really gotten serious about a program. We set aside and we, we, we, we, we, we set some goals for one year. We did this back in the fall in October to get him ready for this upcoming year, the year that we're now in. And he was really open to the idea and he really bought into it. And, you know, so a lot of these skills that we talk about, like building up better self-awareness, understanding what is happening in your mind and body from moment to moment. If it's not where you want it to be, how do you shift it? Those are the skills

that we work on. And, you know, it goes a lot deeper than that, obviously. but those are the basic skills so that we're trying to make it so that when moments show up, like what happened to him at the Canadian Open in a playoff with a 72-foot, 6-inch put to win a tournament that would be the biggest moment of his life and have now become an iconic moment in Canadian sport history that you might be able to deliver. Look, I am not going to sit here and say that anything that I said had anything to do with that put going in. That was Nick doing what he does. And even at that, there was, there's an element of chance to a 72 foot put. But it's about preparing yourself and doing the work as much as you can and controlling what you can control, including your own mind and

body, right, in that moment. So that the probability of that put goes from one in a million to, I don't know, maybe one in 10,000, and, you know, every once in a while, that one shows up. And so, yeah, that was pretty cool. That was so cool. When you sent me that footage, I was blown away and I was like, this isn't happening. And even the announcers were like, this is not possible. Yeah. What is the difference in comparison to golf?

You sort of described really cool how adrenaline impacts the body to snowboarding. Do you see a huge difference or are their parallels? There are some differences and some parallels. So I also do work with the Canadian national freestyle, not freestyle team, but the slope style team. I do some work with freestyle ski, too, but the slope style and the big air team. So these are the craziest of the crazy snowboarders who throw themselves off 75-foot jumps. And it's super dangerous and super risky and really scary. So the similarities are, you know, especially in the case of big air, where, you know, you're standing at the

top of a 200 meter in run looking down the barrel at this 70 or 80 foot gap jump at the bottom. And you're trying to tell yourself in that moment, are you going to throw four spins and three flips? Are you going to try five this time for the first time ever? Knowing that if you don't make it, there's a really good chance you're putting life and limb on the line. That's literally the place that we're at now in competitive big air snowboard. And getting yourself ready, and I mean mind and body ready for those moments of extreme stress. There's a lot of crossover. You know, a professional golfer isn't going to die if they miss that putt.

But in those moments, it feels like something like that to them, right? So the similarity is just about learning to become more aware of what your inner state is and then shifting it into a place that either is more conducive to high performance, maybe flow. And then when it's all said and done, being able to shut it all down and recover and put the energy back into the system, like those are the things that are the same. So, you know, those are that tend to be the areas that I enjoy working with the most. Like, I've worked with a lot of team sports and I love working with teams and team dynamics are really interesting to me.

But I think I'm most passionate about working with individuals who are out there alone. Like even if you have a team around you, ultimately you're the one who's got to take the club back or run the race or drop into that jump. It's you and it's a lonely place at times. And I'm really drawn to that, you know, what is that you versus you battle looking like where it's just a lonely place. you, right? You don't have a team behind you to get the rebound or to pass the ball or to make a save. It's all on you. So I find that arena of human performance really, really interesting. Of course, snowboard has its differences, though, right? You drop in, you get gravity going for you. It's more conducive to flow. It's a very flowy environment. But I do think there's some interesting

crossover too. Interesting. That's how I feel about the UFC, to be honest with you. I love that one person's getting into the cage. And, of course, again, they have a team around them. But at the end of the day, you know whether or not they brought it, what they did well, what they did wrong, and they were able to go back and study exactly where they went wrong and to know, oh, we all kind of tried our best and we didn't have the best. And it's clear cut and it's more. It's amazing.

And I can tell you, speaking of the UFC, so the person who runs the Performance Institute down in Vegas, Duncan French, he's a friend of mine. And what they're doing to prepare UFC fighters nowadays is just incredible. The amount of information and data that they have and the strategies that they have, both physical skill training and mental performance, it's just, it's really cool to see the approach that is unfolding down there under his direction. It's kind of trickling its way through the entire sport, but he's really driving that. And I know that he's a big believer in the mental aspect of it and making sure that you show up and you don't just not have your best on a given day to do whatever you can and turn all those knobs that you can turn before you step in and, you know, the bell rings.

Moving in a different direction, my grandmother attended St. Mary's Indian Residential School. She faced a lot of trauma as a consequence. She drank alcohol as a consequence and ended up giving my mother fetal alcohol syndrome. disorder. I was raised by her as a single mother. I think she's admirable. She doesn't have the same logical reasoning that I might have. And that's certainly my area of preference. I like to think about things logically and reason things out. But it increased her ability to be emotionally understanding and nurturing and supportive. You've actually done a lot of research on this. And I'm just curious as to what your research brought about in terms of FASD.

Yeah, that was going back a few years, but yeah, there were probably maybe seven years where I was really interested in the world of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, of which fetal alcohol syndrome is one of the places on that spectrum, as you well know. And the interesting thing that we were trying to unpack in our work was that if you have a brain disability, right? You've got alcohol causes brain damage full stop, okay? It's a teratogen, and it's known to cause certain types of brain defects. and that turns into certain behavioral manifestations of the things that you talked about. And people that live their lives on that spectrum have incredible challenges trying to navigate the kids, for example, in school as they become youths. You know, you see incarcerations going up and there's a disproportionate number of people that are in prison who have some diabetes. diagnosis along that FASD spectrum.

And the whole system seems very much geared against them, right? A lot of the skills that they are not strong in are the things that our schools, for example, put a lot of priority on. And so our program was about trying to find what are those hidden strengths, right? Because everybody has things that they're good at. So, for example, this is the most simple one I can think of. You know, most of the kids that we had in our program, along with their diagnosis of FASD, also had ADHD diagnoses. They go together and there's probably a lot of crossover in the neurobiology there.

So they're hyperactive and they have difficulty paying attention. But you look at what happens to those kids when you put a ball in their hand or you put them in front of a video game. And all of a sudden, there's no problem. with attention? They'll throw that ball off the wall eight million times in a row. They will sit down and get really engaged in video games and have no problem going four or five hours. Not that that's the best thing necessarily, but it speaks to there's a hidden strength there and attention if it's geared towards something that they are already inclined to enjoy or to find some flow in maybe, right? So we were really interested in doing a strengths analysis.

And then trying to figure out how you could build programming around that and help them develop parts of their brain sort of indirectly by targeting things that they love doing or that they're really good at. And that reinforces that they have capabilities instead of always saying, do more of these math problems or go do some of this quiet reading, right, the way that we structure school. And so we were building this strength-based program. And we saw some great results from that. So, you know, a lot of that stuff, you know, my colleague at the university, Alison Pritchardor, she's sort of taken up the mantle on that work and is continuing it to this day. And it's really, really interesting. And I think really important, I think the, you know, the last time I checked the rates of the diagnosis of people on that FASD spectrum continue to go up.

And so the need for better ideas to help people learn to use the skills that they're already, good at and to help them understand that they have capabilities and abilities as opposed to just disabilities, right? I think there's so much room there to explore and I'm glad to see that that work is continuing. I love that because that's always how I felt, which is I'm very logical. I can do that stuff, but to see her always want to have good quality conversations, she's always been connected to the community. People, everybody knows her and everybody gets along with her.

She's not a divisive person or a short person or a, um, rude person, she's very considerate and thoughtful, and that's, to me, her superpower, and it's unique, and you can look at the challenges, but to look at it from both perspectives, yes, maybe you have a deficit in that, but certainly other people with no disabilities have their deficits. Where are your strengths? And to admire people for what they're good at is what we do all the time. We don't look at snowboarders and go, well, why aren't you a basketball player?

We admire them for what their skill is, and we're able to set aside all the things that they might not be good at and recognize them for their abilities. The other one is Parkinson's disease. And you talk about your research in that area. Sure, yeah. So that's going back into, so when I first graduated from my PhD program, I was really interested in the general field of human motor control. So how does your brain move your body?

And from that, my own professional career, I started looking at two groups. So basic understanding of how the brain controls the body. And the two branches of that that really got me interested were what happens when we are really, really good at controlling our bodies? Like that's the case of expertise and athletes and talented musicians and artists, really good at moving our bodies in certain ways, right? And then I was also really interested in what's the other end of that spectrum where all of a sudden in the brain, because of the depletion of dopamine neurons, all of a sudden we lose the ability to control our bodies. and we end up with this neurodegenerative disorder that is called Parkinson's disease. And so to me, there was this really interesting look at the bookends of the possibility of human performance.

What happens when everything goes right and everything is, you know, all firing on all cylinders versus how, you know, what happens inside of us when we lose the ability to control our bodies because of really a single neurotransmitter deficiency in the brain, that's fascinating to me. So I learned as much about human potential by studying what happens when things go wrong as I have when things go right. And the classes that I teach at the university still cover those same topics. So if you take my upper division human motor control class, you're going to get a heavy dose of athlete expertise. and flow, but you're also going to, we're going to dive deep into the world of Parkinson's disease and what happens when we lose the ability to move our body the way we want, when we

want. So I think they're both fascinating areas of interest. I've certainly in my professional career now slanted it heavily towards the upper possibility space of human performance, but I'm always really interested in what's happening in the Parkinson's world. Still, I follow that stuff closely. That's fascinating, too. You have shown throughout this conversation, how well you are at explaining things and your skill set in communicating such complex ideas where you have a knowledge base, but your rate, my professor, is over to the roof as well. Is it? I haven't looked in a while.

I know people usually avoid those topics. I'm wondering, because you've dealt with such an array of people, you deal with students, you work with the best of the best, you work with experts in their craft. What advice do you have for people to get motivated, to get excited about the idea of chasing their passion? see this as again, like that, that thing to reach for, that thing to look at and go, I want to get good at something. I want to get excited about something in my own life. What advice do you have for people in that circumstance? Start now. I mean, we've never, I mean, we talked a little bit earlier about sort of the downside of some of the, you know, the technology that we are all kind

of embracing to a level that might not be really pro-social all the time. But the fact of the matter is there's a big upside there too. There has never been a better time to get access to information. I mean, I wish when I was doing my PhD that, you know, the Huberman Lab podcast existed for just one example, right? Or when I was trying to understand, you know, the inner mind of an athlete that Michael Jervais, you know, finding mastery podcast existed. And podcasts are just one example, right? There's all the audio books, you know, there's free access to research in many, many places now. There is so many places where you can go and learn from the best people and get an education that doesn't mean you have to be in the ivory tower of the, you know,

academia across the street, right? This is a great time to be alive and to learn things that you would not have had access to even 10 years ago. So find, like, sit down and ask yourself, like, what are the places you'd like to go? One of the first things I do when I work with people is just have them sit down and write out some goals and have a very specific goals setting strategy that I'd use. Like, what are the big, high, hard goals you would like to achieve in a year or two years or five years? Okay. Great. You want to win a gold medal at the next Olympics? Great. Okay, let's put that on the map. But what are you going to do tomorrow, right? And we set a bunch of process goals. How are you going to sleep? What are you going to do about your sleep if that's an issue for you?

How are you going to fuel your body? What kind of mental skills are you going to work on? What are the physical skills you're going to work on? And then you get a bucket of process goals. And these are the things you can do every day, every week. So that by the time two, three years come around, the next Olympics roll around, you're in a much better place. If all you do is set that big, high, hard goal, I always say like a goal without a process is a wish, right? If you can put into place those everyday steps, those things you can do, you know, read James Clear, atomic habits, what it's all about, right?

It's a great book on this sort of an idea. But think about those little things and don't underestimate the value of doing those little things every day and moving yourself 1% closer to the big goal. And maybe by the time that goal, it's time to see if you can achieve that goal, maybe you get there. But hey, you know what? Even if you don't, you're going to be a lot further down the road in the direction of your goal than you were when you started. How can people connect with you? You're an inspirational individual. That was incredible. How can people follow you, connect with Exos? How can they stay tuned? Sure. So let's see. So yeah, teamexos.com is where we do our work with.

With exos, the university, ufv.ca, is where I do my work there. And outside of that, if you want to see what I'm up to, I've got a reasonably active Instagram account. Dr. Chris Bertram is my handle on, I think, all the social media channels right now. So you could find me there, too. This was incredible. I cannot believe we just did an hour. I learned so much. This definitely lived up to the hype.

I'm so honored. Fell into a flow state for a bit. That was just awesome. Well, Aaron, I will say to you that part of the art of having good podcasts and good conversation is having somebody who's really present and asking really great questions, and you certainly did that. And so I commend you for running a really nice interview. It's been fun. Thank you so much.