Speaker 1: Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello everyone, welcome to the Holy Human Podcast.
Speaker 1: This episode is a marathon of a conversation, So don't
Speaker 1: say I didn't warn you. Get ready. And I guess
Speaker 1: that's pretty fitting because my guest is an expert on
Speaker 1: optimizing productivity and human performance. Stephen Cotler is an award
Speaker 1: winning journalist, best selling author, and he joins us today
Speaker 1: on Holy Human. Yea intact in fact, Stephen Coottler, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me on the Holy Human Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. I stumbled upon your
Speaker 1: book The Art of Impossible randomly, and I fell in
Speaker 1: love with it. It was really really interesting to read,
Speaker 1: and so I just want to dive in with you,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, because I have a zillion questions
Speaker 1: when you talk about impossible, how do you define the impossible?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like that can be very personal for
Speaker 1: each and every one of us. So the way I
Speaker 1: think about it is just sort of maybe the way
Speaker 1: I experienced it when I started my career as a journalist.
Speaker 1: I was interested in those moments in time when the
Speaker 1: impossible became possible, when stuff that had never been done before,
Speaker 1: literally got done for the first time. And this could
Speaker 1: be in sports, this could be in sciences, in technology
Speaker 1: for twenty years when whenever there was a sci fi
Speaker 1: technology that turned into a science fact technology, the first
Speaker 1: bionic body part, the first artificial vision implant, the first
Speaker 1: private spaceship. I was, They're trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on? How did you guys just
Speaker 1: do this or gals? But what I learned, the lessons
Speaker 1: I learned, and at the heart of the book the
Speaker 1: art impossible. They're all lessons learned from people who have
Speaker 1: accomplished capital impossible. They're meant to be applied by anybody
Speaker 1: interested in what I call lower case I impossible, those
Speaker 1: things we think are impossible for us. The example I
Speaker 1: given the book is I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. It was a blue collar steel
Speaker 1: mill town. And from the time I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a writer, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: any writers, didn't know how you became a writer. There
Speaker 1: was no Internet, there were no books, there was no
Speaker 1: It was like I woke up one day and one
Speaker 1: mom and dad. When I grew up, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: an elf No, no, no, hobbit, I'm gonna be a
Speaker 1: hobby right. I mean like that was for all I
Speaker 1: knew how to get there. That was a lower case
Speaker 1: I impossible. Overcoming deep trauma, rising out of poverty, becoming
Speaker 1: world class at anything right, stamp collecting music, I don't
Speaker 1: care what it is, becoming a successful artist, becoming a
Speaker 1: successful entrepreneur. These are all lower case impossible. Is the
Speaker 1: one thing I wanted, the caveat I want to sort
Speaker 1: of attack on the end of this is I say
Speaker 1: a lot that peak performance is nothing more or less
Speaker 1: than getting our biology to work for us rather than
Speaker 1: against us. So the cool thing is this, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in capital ie impossible, that which has never been done, well,
Speaker 1: that's what our biology is good for. We're designed to
Speaker 1: go after those kind of big challenges. So fantastic. The
Speaker 1: same biology is what gets us to go after a
Speaker 1: small eye impossible. It's the same it works the same
Speaker 1: tool kit. But if you listen to me and you're like, dude,
Speaker 1: shut the hell up, I'm just trying to get through Monday. Man.
Speaker 1: I did like this Monday, okay, like some people. Right,
Speaker 1: So the cool thing is it's the same biology, the
Speaker 1: tool kid is the same. So that's what you know.
Speaker 1: That's why it's worth learning a little science along the
Speaker 1: way with this stuff because it gives you through a
Speaker 1: foundational tool kit and you can apply it to whatever
Speaker 1: you know. I want to get along with my kids
Speaker 1: a little better. I want to be a little more
Speaker 1: productive at work. I want to become a writer. I wanna,
Speaker 1: you know, serve hundred foot waves. Take your pick, right?
Speaker 1: What So your original impossible was becoming a writer? Is
Speaker 1: there a what you're impossible? Now? So I'm fifty four,
Speaker 1: and there are about eleven biological reasons why it should
Speaker 1: be impossible for somebody my age to learn how to
Speaker 1: park ski. Um, I don't know if you know what parks.
Speaker 1: What I was going to say, jobs, rails, rail slides, box,
Speaker 1: it's jobs, hips, X game stuff. And there's there's like
Speaker 1: eleven different biological reasons why that. And but there's all
Speaker 1: this new reason. There's a new field called peak performance aging,
Speaker 1: and it's legit. It's not like blue Zone how to
Speaker 1: like have happiness and while being antil your in your nineties.
Speaker 1: It's literally how do you kick ass to your eight
Speaker 1: and ninety there's a whole bunch of new discoveries in
Speaker 1: kind of cutting into neuro science fields like embodied cognition
Speaker 1: and things like that that are pointing at hey, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, like those reasons that it's impossible for a
Speaker 1: guy like me my age to learn how to do this,
Speaker 1: maybe they're not Maybe that's not true. There's not enough
Speaker 1: to write like a definitive book, but there's definitely enough
Speaker 1: to run a living experiment. So that's what I've been
Speaker 1: doing for the past year is trying to learn how
Speaker 1: to park ski. I've had eight five days on the hill.
Speaker 1: I've done quite a bit of damage to my body
Speaker 1: a lot of the way um and but I've also
Speaker 1: made on more progress some of the people I'm working with,
Speaker 1: I've coached Olympic athletes and things like that. So like
Speaker 1: I've made more progress than I thought than anybody thought
Speaker 1: it was possible, including me. We're like, holy crap, look
Speaker 1: what you can do with this stuff in a year.
Speaker 1: So that's been right in front of me, and that
Speaker 1: there's always you know, half a dozen ongoing projects at
Speaker 1: the Flow Research Collective on kind of the narrow biology
Speaker 1: of this that are you know, big challenges that I like,
Speaker 1: but they're not skiing. Is really was was really absurd
Speaker 1: at great fun. I love it. That's like me wanting
Speaker 1: to I love boxing, and I've always like, that's my
Speaker 1: next day. I'm gonna be like a female boxer. But
Speaker 1: I need a really really good plastic surgeon on hand.
Speaker 1: I feel like you need a really good doctor on
Speaker 1: hand when it comes to the beating up that you're
Speaker 1: gonna that you're doing to your body. I did not
Speaker 1: until about days sixty five of the season, and I
Speaker 1: got to a point where and luckily I do what
Speaker 1: I do is so I called my friend Fred. It
Speaker 1: runs that you would perform, etcetera Baby Mexico. It does
Speaker 1: this for a living. I was like, okay, I have
Speaker 1: taken it about as far as I can. I've got like,
Speaker 1: did I do perfec damage to my shoulder? How fund
Speaker 1: is my knee? R my language? Uh? Well, at least
Speaker 1: having fun doing it? I mean that's key, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. Well. You know, it was so interesting
Speaker 1: to hear in your book about the biochemistry and neurochemistry
Speaker 1: of what is behind being driven and staying driven and
Speaker 1: creating and achieving, because you know, why is it so
Speaker 1: important for us to understand that you've answered a bit
Speaker 1: of this, but our biochemistry in order to achieve greatness
Speaker 1: in order to not just survive in the world, but
Speaker 1: to actually thrive. So there's no quick answer to this.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna piece together, all right. You asked hard questions, lady. Sorry,
Speaker 1: it's good. The first thing is what's new in this
Speaker 1: field and what's really exciting. And what we figured out
Speaker 1: is you heard me say performance is nothing more than
Speaker 1: getting our biology to work for us or against us.
Speaker 1: It turns out that biology is a limited set of skills.
Speaker 1: It's not like this never ending thing of things that
Speaker 1: I have to work with. There's a bunch of skills
Speaker 1: that we file under the heading of motivation. That's a
Speaker 1: catch all tournament means intrinsic motivation, extrinsic grit, and goal setting,
Speaker 1: but we call it motivation signs. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: learning skills. There's a bunch of creativity skills, and finally
Speaker 1: there's flow skill. Flow is the optimal state of consciousness,
Speaker 1: world feel the best and former best. That's the full
Speaker 1: tool kit. And the way I'd like to think about
Speaker 1: it is when you face any challenge, motivation gets us
Speaker 1: into the game. Learning allows us to continue to play creativity,
Speaker 1: especially when you're going after those kind of high hard challenges.
Speaker 1: I don't quite know how to get there. How I
Speaker 1: want to become a writer, and I live in Cleveland, right.
Speaker 1: Creativity is how you steer and flow because it's this
Speaker 1: state available to all of us, and it boosts everything.
Speaker 1: It's operable performance that we can come back to. What
Speaker 1: that really isn't how it matters. It's how you terb
Speaker 1: or boost the results usually beyond all reasonable expectation. That's
Speaker 1: sort of how the formula to getting Gordon and possible.
Speaker 1: That's the format of getting towards anywhere in peak performance.
Speaker 1: What's interesting, what's cool, what's new is we've known about elements.
Speaker 1: I mean like, hey, you need grit for performance, this
Speaker 1: is a new writer. Hey you need some motivation, or
Speaker 1: you've got to know how to learn. Or what's cool
Speaker 1: and new is we've started to figure out is one
Speaker 1: this is the full tool kit. And two it's a system.
Speaker 1: It evolved to work in a certain order, in a
Speaker 1: certain way. And if you use the system in the
Speaker 1: order that it's designed to work, you get so much farther,
Speaker 1: so much faster and with with a lot less fuss,
Speaker 1: if you can part of the alliteration. But caveat, here's
Speaker 1: the caveat, and here's the other side to this. The
Speaker 1: way I like to explain it is we're designed to
Speaker 1: go big. We're literally as as organism was designed to
Speaker 1: go after hard challenges. But if you don't use the
Speaker 1: system the way it was designed, there are significant penalties.
Speaker 1: And I have to explain a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what do I mean by system to talk about the penalties.
Speaker 1: But let's just start with motivation. So the research is
Speaker 1: really clear on motivation. If you want to be motivated
Speaker 1: um for any kind of hard goal, it's not enough
Speaker 1: to have like one or two things driving you towards
Speaker 1: that goal. It's like an athlete going towards a physical challenge.
Speaker 1: They're gonna have enough fats and enough carbs and enough proteins,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be well hydrated, they're gonna sleep, they're
Speaker 1: gonna do everything they can charge up every single energy
Speaker 1: source for the athletic competition. The same thing is true
Speaker 1: with our psychological energy sources motivation. So if you're going
Speaker 1: after any kind of hard challenges, it's hard. Here I mean,
Speaker 1: thirty years of studying the best of the best in
Speaker 1: the world, people have accomplished amazing us down and things
Speaker 1: in every field. It's hard for everyone. I've never met
Speaker 1: anybody who has an easy time in this life. And
Speaker 1: so if it's hard here in general, and it sucks
Speaker 1: here but it turns up, it sucks worse if you
Speaker 1: sit on your ass and just like look at life,
Speaker 1: or then it sucks less if you go after you
Speaker 1: high hard goals, because the system is designed to go
Speaker 1: after higher goals and it literally is less unpleasant to
Speaker 1: put it differently. So I have the one thing I
Speaker 1: have to explain before this is gonna make any sense
Speaker 1: is when we talk about intrinsic motivation stacking fuel sources. Right,
Speaker 1: there's five big intrinsic motivators curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and
Speaker 1: man history, and they're all linked together. Curiosity is literally
Speaker 1: designed to be built into passion biologically. Passion is designed
Speaker 1: to be coupled to a cause greater than yourself, which
Speaker 1: gives you purpose. Once an organism has purpose, and this
Speaker 1: could be a human or a an analy it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter what do you need. You need autonomy. I
Speaker 1: want the freedom to pursue my purpose. And once you
Speaker 1: have that autonomy, what do you need? Mastery the skills
Speaker 1: to pursue it really well. And if you get all
Speaker 1: those things right, For reasons that we won't go into,
Speaker 1: they're all flow triggers. So as a result of doing
Speaker 1: all this, you get a lot more time in flow.
Speaker 1: That's how the system is designed to work. That's an
Speaker 1: order is designed to work. It. So anxiety and depression
Speaker 1: are at epidemic levels right now in the world. We
Speaker 1: need to go into this. Okay, So and there are
Speaker 1: I said earlier, not going big is bad for us.
Speaker 1: Here's what I mean. There are eight known causes of
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression. There are two that most people pay
Speaker 1: the most attention to, and they're not exactly accurate. So
Speaker 1: you hear a lot about genetics. Hey, my brain is
Speaker 1: screwed up. I can't make enough serotonin and I can't
Speaker 1: be happy. And the other one is trauma. This really
Speaker 1: horrible thing happened to me. I can't get over it,
Speaker 1: and I've got anxiety and depression. And let's just point
Speaker 1: out that one out of TEND adults is going to
Speaker 1: get diagnosed with anxiety depression this year. It's the largest
Speaker 1: stray and on public health coffers. And somebody kills themselves
Speaker 1: in America once every twelve seconds. So we see we
Speaker 1: absolutely suck at treating again epidemic and um, we're bad
Speaker 1: at So if the two big causes I said, our
Speaker 1: genetics and trauma, but they're not right. Genetics, if you
Speaker 1: look at the data, is only fift percent of the equation. Ever,
Speaker 1: it's always my genetics, my early childhood experience and how
Speaker 1: I'm living my life today with trauma. And we all
Speaker 1: know this. The vast majority of time bad ship happens,
Speaker 1: and you don't get PTSD, you get post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: You deal with the bad ship, you lift yourself up,
Speaker 1: you grow in your stronger afterwards, and we call that life.
Speaker 1: That's how it usually works. What are the other six
Speaker 1: major causes of depression? The number one positive depression is
Speaker 1: lack of meaningful work? What does that mean under the
Speaker 1: hood when we peel it back and we look at
Speaker 1: it neurobiologically, means work that I'm not curious about, that
Speaker 1: doesn't give me dopamine that I get from curiosity. It's
Speaker 1: work that I'm not passionate about. So there's no dopamine
Speaker 1: and nor open after there's no purpose. It's not aligned
Speaker 1: my purpose or my strengths or who I am as
Speaker 1: a person. I'm not giving the autonomy the freedom to
Speaker 1: pursue it the way I want to. And there's no
Speaker 1: opportunity for mastering. Nothing I'm doing at work is affording me.
Speaker 1: I'm not learning skills that I will help me achieve
Speaker 1: my dreams. And as a bonus, there's no flow. That's right.
Speaker 1: The system is designed to work one way. When we
Speaker 1: don't use it the way it's start to work, there's
Speaker 1: a significant penalty. And we call that penalty anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1: But can you actually have a chemical imbalance and be
Speaker 1: at a deficiency? Um? Do you know? Do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? Yeah? Well, so what what you're saying
Speaker 1: is based on, um, what I believe that people will
Speaker 1: argue this. What I believe is the fault, the hypothesis.
Speaker 1: The fault. The hypothesis is there's sich things as un normal.
Speaker 1: There's sich thing is a right? Like there, what's the
Speaker 1: freaking baseline? Right? I can introduce you to Dr Nett Hallow.
Speaker 1: I was the world leading expert on a d h
Speaker 1: d's at Harvard. He used to be on my board
Speaker 1: at older company, and he will tell you that a
Speaker 1: d h D is a natural product of evolution and
Speaker 1: is actually a superpower if you know how to manage it,
Speaker 1: because it helps you get into flow much more easily.
Speaker 1: So is a d h D a handicapped or is
Speaker 1: this superpower? I will tell you that one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I've written fourteen books and had all the success
Speaker 1: I've had is because I've got a bad case to
Speaker 1: the O c D, and it's fantastic for the work
Speaker 1: I need to do. I've also got ridiculous amounts of anxiety.
Speaker 1: My best friend is my editor for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: looks at my career and he literally calls it the
Speaker 1: m higher the fear built so right, you know this
Speaker 1: as well as I do. Every successful person I've ever
Speaker 1: met is running away from something, just as you're asked,
Speaker 1: as they're running towards something because it's really hard to
Speaker 1: get any place good. So you can have to You
Speaker 1: need all the motivation, right, you need to learn how
Speaker 1: to take that fear and use as a motivator, because
Speaker 1: a fantastic motivator get focused for free, that's amazing, right,
Speaker 1: Like for free cool all right, we are going to
Speaker 1: pause for just a second and catch our breath, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with the dynamics. Stephen Codler, Welcome back, love.
Speaker 1: Stephen Codler was just taking us on a whirlwind tour
Speaker 1: of explaining how fear often morphs into motivation. Every book
Speaker 1: that I write, there's always a communication challenge. I gotta
Speaker 1: teach you something. There's always a style challenge. I gotta
Speaker 1: pick the right style to teach it to you in.
Speaker 1: And then there's a secret challenge, something you never saw
Speaker 1: that is something that's scares me about the book. My
Speaker 1: book Bold, for example, every business book I've ever written,
Speaker 1: I think sucks terrible. I think they're awful. And why
Speaker 1: I'm a punk rocker from Cleveland, Ohio, I am not
Speaker 1: a business guy. So when Bold came my way and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I'm gonna write a
Speaker 1: business book. I want to write a business book that
Speaker 1: doesn't suck. Right. It took me the longest time, and
Speaker 1: I was on Wall Street when some of my early
Speaker 1: flow works started. Haything, I pulled into Wall Street. We did.
Speaker 1: I do so much work on Wall Street. Now it's silly,
Speaker 1: but in the beginning I was always like, do you
Speaker 1: have any idea who's standing in front of you, Like,
Speaker 1: do you have any idea? Like what you literally tried
Speaker 1: to beat me up all through high school? Like I guaranteed,
Speaker 1: my god, that's hysterical. I feel that way to something.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially just starting this podcast. You know, you
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the challenge Gil's sweet spot, you know,
Speaker 1: for performance, and starting this podcast was terrifying for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it was one of the things that
Speaker 1: people don't get. If you see people on stage, they
Speaker 1: don't understand that every single a medium is different. I
Speaker 1: always tell people I got my ass kicked on television
Speaker 1: for ten years. Ten years. I'm sure you did too,
Speaker 1: So you can figure out how to talk that fast
Speaker 1: and answer that question in thirty seconds or radio radios
Speaker 1: or twice as fast as normal life. And like the
Speaker 1: hosts are not particularly nice, so you talk more than
Speaker 1: like thirty one seconds for the answer, and you like, right,
Speaker 1: if you're like, they're gonna you're gonna get shouted down completely.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, And I started so young that I
Speaker 1: guess it was a good thing. I've always said it's
Speaker 1: a good thing because I didn't really have any expectations
Speaker 1: or experiences ahead of time to to kind of compare
Speaker 1: things too. And I was able to to blow into
Speaker 1: each little you know, to radio to television. I learned
Speaker 1: it as I was much more talented than I was.
Speaker 1: And I was also yeah, because asked me, I all
Speaker 1: of it. I was an extreme introvert. I've always been
Speaker 1: agree So it just so happens that, like I have
Speaker 1: found that when I'm on thee the center of attention,
Speaker 1: and it helps me turned my braid off. So every
Speaker 1: now and again I'll play extrovert. I'll get on stage
Speaker 1: and give a speech or you know all that kind
Speaker 1: of that kind of thing. I can play extrovert sometimes
Speaker 1: it'll work. Um, So all that stuff was really hard
Speaker 1: for me. I was like, oh my god, there's like
Speaker 1: eleven people with cameras and they're all looking at I
Speaker 1: get it these people. I feel like I'm very introverted
Speaker 1: to I made the joke like I picked the wrong profession,
Speaker 1: because really I do feel like I'm an introvert and
Speaker 1: being I love that you say, playing an extrovert, because
Speaker 1: that's really kind of what I do all the time,
Speaker 1: being down in this pandemic, you know, for a year,
Speaker 1: and a half. I haven't been off stage for that long.
Speaker 1: Since I was thirteen, I've performed, so by the way,
Speaker 1: I haven't beat because I haven't been off stage since
Speaker 1: um during the pandemic, since I was eleven, because I
Speaker 1: started doing professional magic when I was eleven, and I
Speaker 1: was doing like far misspis and birthday parties, and I
Speaker 1: was like stage at eleven. I was also an introvert,
Speaker 1: but I was talking about professionally since I was well,
Speaker 1: I was getting paid. Oh, I was getting paid said offessially,
Speaker 1: I was getting paid solid. That's amazing. That's amazing. So
Speaker 1: you talk about magic, like how did magic play into
Speaker 1: this for you? Like that was that was kind of
Speaker 1: your opening? And what was amazing about magic is good
Speaker 1: magic really good close up If even when you know
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on, like you have expert level, I
Speaker 1: know what's going on, real good magic, you'll you won't
Speaker 1: see it and be it will look like actual magic,
Speaker 1: like it looks like you're like what I know all
Speaker 1: this ship and what they'll just happened. I learned that
Speaker 1: behind every impossible thing you look at, you see there's
Speaker 1: a skill set, there's a process, there are steps, no
Speaker 1: matter how impossible it looks. That came to my advantage
Speaker 1: when I as an early journalist, When I first started
Speaker 1: encountering the impossible, it was covering action sports, especially in
Speaker 1: there when we had never seen anything like it. But
Speaker 1: even still, like if you go to an event like
Speaker 1: Red Bull Rampage, you go actually see the X Games
Speaker 1: in person. It's one thing to watch it on TV.
Speaker 1: The camera flattens everything, and you go and see any
Speaker 1: of the events live, it looks like people are trying
Speaker 1: to kill themselves. And when they don't kill themselves, right,
Speaker 1: it looks like actual magic. This was actually sports in
Speaker 1: the nineties. They talked about is the Great Era of Impossible.
Speaker 1: More impossible things got done in a shorter term period
Speaker 1: than everyfor and athletic history, and the limits of your
Speaker 1: performance got pushed farther faster than every reform and even history.
Speaker 1: And you know, I had a front row seat. Um,
Speaker 1: it was like it was doubly peculiar for me because
Speaker 1: I was living in Squaw Valley. I knew these people,
Speaker 1: they were my friends, and I would tell this story
Speaker 1: in the book. But what caught my attention wasn't just
Speaker 1: that they were doing the impossible. It was that most
Speaker 1: of the people I knew came from like broken homes
Speaker 1: and bad childhoods. They had little money, they had very
Speaker 1: little education, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol, lots are
Speaker 1: risk taking, Like normally, put these things together in the
Speaker 1: community and people die younger, go to jail. They don't
Speaker 1: reinvent what's possible for the human species. So what the
Speaker 1: hell was going on was my initial sort of question
Speaker 1: that I bought to it, but everybody else was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's athletic talent, it's something right, And I went, I've
Speaker 1: seen this before. I've seen things that look impossible before,
Speaker 1: and there's always a skill set, there's always a process,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to know what it was. It's sort
Speaker 1: of what led me into neuroscience. It's not just about
Speaker 1: physical skills. There's something else going on. There's something mental
Speaker 1: going on. I want to understand that because I was
Speaker 1: on the hill, I was skiing with these these same people,
Speaker 1: and I could see what they were doing and it
Speaker 1: was the mental game was most of it, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to know how that worked. Yeah, the mental game
Speaker 1: is so much of it. Absolutely. You talk about these
Speaker 1: the five intrinsic drivers and stacking can you get that stuck?
Speaker 1: You said you can get it wrong? How do we
Speaker 1: get it wrong? What's a common not like a waiting
Speaker 1: get a really a really common one, especially in today's world,
Speaker 1: because so two things out there too. There's two answers
Speaker 1: I'll speak to because I think they're relevant here. The
Speaker 1: first is, in today's world, for a lot of probably
Speaker 1: very admirable reasons, we have fetishized passion and purpose to
Speaker 1: a level that is almost absurd. We have a rule
Speaker 1: of my company, which is have a passion and have
Speaker 1: a purpose, and keep it to your damn self, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean that both because the size of goal
Speaker 1: setting tells you that you want to keep those things
Speaker 1: to yourself. They're more powerful until you've actually achieved success
Speaker 1: in your goals. Giving them to yourself is way more powerful.
Speaker 1: It keeps more motivation inside. So every time I meet
Speaker 1: somebody who starts at meeting, Hi, my name is Sally,
Speaker 1: and my passion is I think one. You're lying. You're
Speaker 1: lying to me, that's not actually your passion, Because if
Speaker 1: if that was really your passion, I would freaking know
Speaker 1: you're telling you're faking it till you make it, And
Speaker 1: I don't want I don't believe you. And two, I
Speaker 1: think even if that is your passion, you just literally
Speaker 1: drained motivation out of your system drain dup mean out
Speaker 1: of your system and are now gonna have a harder
Speaker 1: time achieving your passion. So I think that's a disaster
Speaker 1: talking about your passion, talking about your purpose. But biologically,
Speaker 1: why do these things matter? They matter for the same
Speaker 1: thing I said earlier. You get focused for free. That's
Speaker 1: the big deal. The brain is a is a huge
Speaker 1: energy hog. It's uses of our energy at rest right Um,
Speaker 1: it's two percent of our body mass energy at rest,
Speaker 1: almost a quarter of what we eat, and if we're
Speaker 1: trying to do something hard, it's like half of what
Speaker 1: we eat is go into our brain power. What does
Speaker 1: the brain spend most of that energy on. It spends
Speaker 1: a lot of it on focus. So if you are
Speaker 1: curious about something, focus for free. If you are passionate
Speaker 1: about it, think about romance glove. That's neurobiologically the same
Speaker 1: as I'm passionate about my writing or im passed about
Speaker 1: my music. Think about like the first time you fell
Speaker 1: in love or a reason, how much you couldn't stop
Speaker 1: looking and thinking about the other person did you Were
Speaker 1: you expending energy to do that? Where was it like
Speaker 1: doing homework? It had you couldn't stop it? It was right?
Speaker 1: And well that's how there's the fine lot fashionate obsession
Speaker 1: is essentially you're splitting hairs. Right. We call it obsession
Speaker 1: if we think what you're doing is unhealthy. Right, we
Speaker 1: call it passion if we like it. But I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're like when you're recording an album, and
Speaker 1: may makes albums anymore so I'm dating myself. But when
Speaker 1: I write, when I recorded, when I'm writing a book
Speaker 1: a large chunk of the time, you could call it passion.
Speaker 1: You could also call it like an insanity, right, like
Speaker 1: if the book isn't going well, it's that Like what
Speaker 1: is madness or what is passion? God sideway, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, I don't I like so um
Speaker 1: purpose which gets supermistified these days. Curiosity is a little
Speaker 1: bit of dopeming and a little bit more apid effort.
Speaker 1: Those are the pleasure chemicals that make us feel excited
Speaker 1: and give us that focus for free. Passion is a
Speaker 1: lot of nor up and effort and openin Purpose is
Speaker 1: nor up and effort and dopein at passion levels plus
Speaker 1: pro social chemicals like demandamide, serotonin, and endorphins. These are
Speaker 1: the chemicals that underpinned social bonding. So endorphins right mother
Speaker 1: child love, those are underpinned by endorphins. Friendships deep friendships
Speaker 1: are underpinned by endorphins. Oxytocin is the so called cuddle
Speaker 1: chemical called the trust chemical. Serotonin is that warm I'm
Speaker 1: open to you and your ideas, kind of feeling, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You're getting more feel good neurochemistry. You're getting more focus
Speaker 1: for free. That's the big deal here. There's no like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be super mystical and super weighty.
Speaker 1: You're just playing games with their chemistry. So that's meant
Speaker 1: to sort of take the pressure off. I think people
Speaker 1: feel a lot of pressure. And the most important thing
Speaker 1: is neurobiologically, the systems designed to work in order. It
Speaker 1: is designed to work slowly. We're not built as organisms
Speaker 1: to discover our passion overnight. That's not really how it works.
Speaker 1: Passions are built slowly over time. And where I see
Speaker 1: the biggest mistake, especially in younger people or so at
Speaker 1: the flourish collective wet clientele, are women in their forties
Speaker 1: and fifties, usually powerhouse women who parked their career for
Speaker 1: a while to raise of family, and now we're getting
Speaker 1: after it again. And they are like they like, they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I parked everything. I give me my goddamn passion.
Speaker 1: I want it now, right, I want it now. Let's
Speaker 1: fix it down, and like, I'm like you, you guys
Speaker 1: are ferocious. But I really like that. But it's but
Speaker 1: dial it back in the dial. Well, you don't because
Speaker 1: the thing that where you where you really don't want
Speaker 1: to screw this up and you'll get this immediately, is
Speaker 1: you do not want to be two years into your
Speaker 1: passion to discover oh shit, it was only a phase
Speaker 1: and that can happen, right. Curiosity is designed to be
Speaker 1: built in a passion. Passion is really the intersection of
Speaker 1: multiple curiosities. But you have to like figure out I
Speaker 1: am curious about this, I'm curious about this. In intersects here,
Speaker 1: you play there, you learn a little bit, you grow
Speaker 1: a little bit. Then you find another passion, another intersection,
Speaker 1: and that's how you grow it. I have a friend
Speaker 1: who will go unnamed, who discovered it at a out
Speaker 1: thirty seven that it turned out med school and all that. No,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter even that she was massively in debt.
Speaker 1: She was supposed to be an archaeologist and that was
Speaker 1: her real passion and her real calling. And yeah, signed
Speaker 1: up for a two year dig in Egypt and got
Speaker 1: like three months into the dig and let a ship.
Speaker 1: I got it wrong, and I've like literally committed there
Speaker 1: are people depending on me. And yeah, so she's still
Speaker 1: in Egypt, not particularly thrilled about it. That's that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I started singing so young. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: I had a natural gift. And I have recently started
Speaker 1: asking myself, after twenty five years of this, is this
Speaker 1: really what I'm supposed to be doing? What are my
Speaker 1: other passions? Because for a long time, I don't think
Speaker 1: I thought I had any other passions. And I'm now
Speaker 1: at thirty eight, like asking starting to ask myself that
Speaker 1: question of like what else am I passionate about? And how?
Speaker 1: Because that's really been the only thing I've been focused
Speaker 1: on my whole life. But I mean, there's whatever it
Speaker 1: is that you choose next, even if it's so far
Speaker 1: away from singing, do it for five to seven years
Speaker 1: and suddenly you know, you're going to be like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: I can blend this with singing, right, Like, oh, totally don't.
Speaker 1: In my head, there's a version of me that's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I could do a stage magic show, and I did
Speaker 1: have action sports and magic, and we can explain the
Speaker 1: neuroscience of people. I mean that ship happens all the
Speaker 1: time in my brain. I just haven't done it, but
Speaker 1: like sooner or later, That's exactly where I'm at with it, too,
Speaker 1: is like, how how do I start to blend all
Speaker 1: of these things together? You know? And the thing that
Speaker 1: I also real heroes of mine, UM give you an
Speaker 1: example from music. Tom Waits is a is a giant
Speaker 1: hero of mine. And one of the reasons he does
Speaker 1: things with language that very few other people are doing.
Speaker 1: He does them music that very few other people are doing.
Speaker 1: But he's reinvented himself over and over and he has
Speaker 1: had the longest career. And I'm super impressed with lifelong
Speaker 1: creative careers because it's so hard, because you have to
Speaker 1: reinvent yourself nine, ten, eleven times. And so when I
Speaker 1: see that, and I see somebody who is even late
Speaker 1: decade in life are doing like truly amazing creative things.
Speaker 1: Stratibia has built two of his best violins in his eighties. Right,
Speaker 1: that's interesting doing. How do you do that? And I
Speaker 1: think one of the ways you can do that is
Speaker 1: you have to kind of keep reinventing yourself a little
Speaker 1: bit by discovering, Okay, this is another passion. This is
Speaker 1: how it feeds into the old. All right, you gotta
Speaker 1: keep doing that. And with that, we are going to
Speaker 1: take another very quick break, but we'll be right back
Speaker 1: very soon. Hello, my beautiful friends. We are back with
Speaker 1: performance and flow experts Stephen Cotler discussing why reinvention and
Speaker 1: passion often go hand in hand. That's why I like.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I learned to park Ski at
Speaker 1: fifty three is I have never been able to think
Speaker 1: really kinesthetically physical, like right, and I wanted to know
Speaker 1: how does my writing change when I add an entire
Speaker 1: new kinesthetic length rodge to my life. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of interesting things that start happening to your brain and
Speaker 1: your fifties that are the result in superpowers if you
Speaker 1: do it right, and they go horribly wrong if you
Speaker 1: do it wrong. So I've tried to do it right. Interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I do want I
Speaker 1: want to get into flow with you a bit because
Speaker 1: you're you're skiing. I actually took up tennis a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and I have found it's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to do. I do it twice a week,
Speaker 1: and I am so in flow on the tennis court
Speaker 1: because it's the one place that I really go to
Speaker 1: just have fun. There's no expectation like I'm learning and
Speaker 1: I'm good at it, and I I just truly enjoy it.
Speaker 1: It was something that I needed in my life that
Speaker 1: I didn't know I needed to give me the high
Speaker 1: of the same kind of high that I get on stage,
Speaker 1: I get on the tennis court. But for different reasons,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of jumping ahead, but I totally get like
Speaker 1: adding adding those things to your life, how they change
Speaker 1: in you and how you see the world and how
Speaker 1: you like you're saying. It can change your writing. For me,
Speaker 1: and it's given me an outlet to to express myself
Speaker 1: and play in a different way that I didn't have.
Speaker 1: So it definitely intertwines and plays into the rest of
Speaker 1: your life when you discover those pieces. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: also like, if you have to be an expert all
Speaker 1: the time, which essentially you do. It's really fun to
Speaker 1: be a beginner again, right, It's really really fun and
Speaker 1: not like I can look as bad as I want to, right, you,
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to judge me here because this is
Speaker 1: not like, this is not the judging arena. There's a
Speaker 1: different there's a judging arena. And that's fair because I
Speaker 1: I put myself there and said I'm gonna make a
Speaker 1: living here. That's one of the reasons Park scheme was
Speaker 1: super fun for me because I was like, I'm fifty
Speaker 1: three years old, I'm an author, I run a Darro
Speaker 1: science research is too. There's zero reason whatsoever you could
Speaker 1: ever expect anything out of this. I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very very true. So so follow for for you know,
Speaker 1: that's becoming like a very big buzzword and I would
Speaker 1: just love to hear from you your explanation of what
Speaker 1: that is. Yeah, so let me um, let's start with
Speaker 1: the scientific definition and then I'll like, I'll build out
Speaker 1: from that because it will be useful. So in the
Speaker 1: scientific definition we gave it earlier, it's it's almost worthless
Speaker 1: from an explanatory point of view, but it's an optimal
Speaker 1: state of consciousness, and this is what's important. Where you
Speaker 1: feel our best and we perform our best. So those
Speaker 1: two components more specifically refers to any of those moments
Speaker 1: of wrapped attention and total absorption. Get so focused on
Speaker 1: the task at hand, so focused on what you do,
Speaker 1: and everything else just starts to disappear. Action awareness are
Speaker 1: going to emerge, your sense of self self consciousness, the
Speaker 1: voice in your head, you're inner critic are going to
Speaker 1: diminish it. Really quiet time is going to dilate, which
Speaker 1: the fancy way I say it passes strangely. Sometimes most
Speaker 1: common experiences, you get so sucked into what you're doing
Speaker 1: right that an hour roes by and you're like, I
Speaker 1: didn't notice what happened? Right? That was five minutes. Usually, um,
Speaker 1: you have to go the other action. You'll get a
Speaker 1: freeze from effect. For many who's been in a car crash,
Speaker 1: time will slow down and throughout all aspects of performance,
Speaker 1: both mental and physical, go through the roof and through
Speaker 1: the roof is not exaggeration. I'll just throw some I'll
Speaker 1: talk about what flow does. These numbers are from research
Speaker 1: done by dozens of different researchers all over the place.
Speaker 1: We know that grit, motivation, and productivity will spike above
Speaker 1: normal and flow we see creativity, innovation spike four inner
Speaker 1: just seven scent. The Department of Defense figured out that
Speaker 1: soldiers and flow learned two hundred forty faster than normal.
Speaker 1: We see empathy go through the roof and flow. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the things we're doing now is working with
Speaker 1: a lot of police forces because cops want more empathy
Speaker 1: in today's world. And thank God, and uh, there's two
Speaker 1: options compassion and do seg meditation will produce empathy or
Speaker 1: flow work will produce empathy and try to teach cops
Speaker 1: compassionate disag meditation was flow was better, We'll do the flow.
Speaker 1: So empathy, collaboration, cooperation, those things. And the most important
Speaker 1: thing probably is that overall life satisfaction, well being, meaning
Speaker 1: and purpose all skyrocket and flow. So it's a huge lift. Finally,
Speaker 1: when psychologists measure flow, they say, hey, the experience has
Speaker 1: six phenomenal logical characteristics. It's a big word, and all
Speaker 1: it means is this is how the experience makes me feel.
Speaker 1: And I listed some of these already, so we know
Speaker 1: we're in flow when there's complete concentration on the task
Speaker 1: at hand, when action awareness start to merge, when time passes. Strangely,
Speaker 1: when this sense of self disappears. We don't have a
Speaker 1: register that says peak performance. What we feel is like
Speaker 1: we can control things we normally can't control. This is
Speaker 1: me as a writer being able to do things at
Speaker 1: twelve a clock on a Monday morning with my words
Speaker 1: that I can't normally do. Right, or a basketball player
Speaker 1: something the hoop is as big as ah loop and right,
Speaker 1: that's that experience. And finally, psychologists use this term flow
Speaker 1: is autotelic. It means it's an end in itself. It
Speaker 1: feels so u fork, so good, so addictively fun that
Speaker 1: you will go extraordinarily out of your way to get
Speaker 1: more of it. Right, That's what it means. So when
Speaker 1: those six characteristics show up during given experience, it's flow. Now,
Speaker 1: one final thing that I want to explain because this
Speaker 1: is very useful for people to understand. It's not a
Speaker 1: single experience, it's a spectrum of experience. Is much like anger, Right,
Speaker 1: you're a little arc you're homicidally murderous. It's the same
Speaker 1: emotion you can be in micro flow. So this is
Speaker 1: when those six characters that show up, but they're like
Speaker 1: one or two on a scale of one to ten. Right,
Speaker 1: you gotta work, sit down and write a quickie email
Speaker 1: to your boss and something you get like so drawn
Speaker 1: in that you end up writing a huge essay. You
Speaker 1: look up two hours I've gone by. You didn't notice,
Speaker 1: So maybe your sense of self didn't totally disappear, but
Speaker 1: bodily arness did. And when you pop back in your head,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh wow, I really have to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. You run off to peak. That happens to
Speaker 1: all of us all the time. Right, that's micro flow.
Speaker 1: Macro flow is the other end of that spectrum. It's
Speaker 1: when those experiences all show up at once, and they
Speaker 1: turned up to eleven. This is a very powerful experience.
Speaker 1: Until the ninety fifties, scientists thought it was a spiritual
Speaker 1: experience or a mystical experience, meaning was found in spiritual
Speaker 1: and religious communities. And it was only in the fifties
Speaker 1: that we started showing up. Flow started showing up in
Speaker 1: the eight populations of atheists. People were studying and they went,
Speaker 1: oh wow, it's not just for religious people, is for everybody.
Speaker 1: What's going on the other end of the spectrum, time
Speaker 1: will slow down and instead of like the self doesn't
Speaker 1: just disappear, but you can start to feel like you're
Speaker 1: one with everything. All out of body experiences are common.
Speaker 1: We understand scientifically, now what causes these things in the brain, um,
Speaker 1: why they're happening, and why they happen in flow, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't change the fact that when you're they're happening
Speaker 1: to you, like, what the hell is going on? This
Speaker 1: is medic it is magic. Well, you say the mystical experiences,
Speaker 1: like does is meditation? Like being in meditation? Is that?
Speaker 1: Are you in flow during meditation or can you be so? No?
Speaker 1: And yes? Okay, so um, flow is a focusing skill.
Speaker 1: Meditation is a focusing skill. They are different kinds of focus. Okay.
Speaker 1: Most meditation systems, whether it's a focused meditation when you're
Speaker 1: focusing on your breath or in open senses meditation when
Speaker 1: you're trying to let all things in and you're not
Speaker 1: judging them, both are phenomenal training for flow because you
Speaker 1: need attention totally in the in the present moment. So
Speaker 1: there's work going back into the eighties that says, hey,
Speaker 1: meditation is and we treating people in specific types of
Speaker 1: mindfulness practices to traut them get into flow as a general,
Speaker 1: but it is just like a low grade trains on state.
Speaker 1: It mimics some of the neurobiological changes in flow. What
Speaker 1: happens to the brain and flow is like a page long.
Speaker 1: What happens to the brain in meditation is like half
Speaker 1: of that page, right, And there are differences. And it
Speaker 1: also and hears that there are certain meditation systems, for
Speaker 1: example Tibetan contrit Buddhist meditation and Jewish Coblistic meditation. Both
Speaker 1: of them involved large amounts of visualization. And like take
Speaker 1: imagine this letter in the Hebrew alphabet and turning into
Speaker 1: this letter and put it on a five sided diet
Speaker 1: and manage it all this stuff. And because of that,
Speaker 1: so there's all this work now that is looking exactly
Speaker 1: at what happens in the brain during different meditation systems.
Speaker 1: Those systems, because there's so much pattern recognition, they produce
Speaker 1: more dopamine than most other meditation systems. As a result,
Speaker 1: they may be able to drive us into flow. So
Speaker 1: unlike so, I can't give you a definit advance there.
Speaker 1: It depends on what kind of attation you're doing. That's
Speaker 1: how good you are at it a lot of things
Speaker 1: like that. That's really interesting. And on that interesting note,
Speaker 1: we are going to take another quick break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back, I promise. All right. We were discussing
Speaker 1: mindfulness and flow with Stephen Codler. So mindfulness would be
Speaker 1: like the opposite of flow. Well, it's um so because
Speaker 1: if you're paying it, I mean, you're in the present moment,
Speaker 1: but you're still very Show you the difference. Okay, you're so.
Speaker 1: I apologize. And of you who's listening to this, who
Speaker 1: has no interest in neuroscience whatsoever, because you're about to
Speaker 1: get some So give flow. A bunch of different things
Speaker 1: happened in the brain. One of the main things that
Speaker 1: happens is the prefernal cortex, part of your brain that's
Speaker 1: right behind your forehead, basically deactivates you swatches. The prefernal
Speaker 1: cortex turn off. Now is a really powerful part of
Speaker 1: your brain. This is long term planning, your logical decision making.
Speaker 1: Since morality lives there sins willpower also um In flow,
Speaker 1: the brain performs an efficiency exchange. It is okay, you
Speaker 1: need all this energy for focus, so let's turn off
Speaker 1: non critical structures and reuse the energy for focus on
Speaker 1: the present moment. That is known as transient hypo frontality
Speaker 1: transient meaning temporary hypo h y p O. It's the
Speaker 1: opposite hyper and just slow down to shut down. The
Speaker 1: activate frontality means the prefrontal cortex, the part of your
Speaker 1: brain that's right back there, so both flow and meditation. So,
Speaker 1: by the way, let's put this in common terms, exercise
Speaker 1: induced transient nival frontality. When you're playing tennis. About twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes into playing tennis, it starts to get quiet upstairs,
Speaker 1: and your lungs expand you can breathe a little bit
Speaker 1: more and it's quieter upstairs. That's exercise induced transy nipol
Speaker 1: fodeality front end of a flow state. There's more work
Speaker 1: that needs to happen in the brain to produce flow,
Speaker 1: but that's micro' you're now at the edge of micro
Speaker 1: flow when you're there and in exercise. Probably happens to
Speaker 1: you on stage two. If you're dancing and you're moving right,
Speaker 1: there's probably a point. Even if you're not in your
Speaker 1: body and you're not feeling like performing, you're going to
Speaker 1: get exercise news trans and ample frontality about a half
Speaker 1: an hour in and suddenly you're like, oh wow, I'm
Speaker 1: in flow. This is great, right, So that in meditation
Speaker 1: you were trying to forget the self, let myself, right,
Speaker 1: So part of the brand that stays turned off most
Speaker 1: of the time. And this is a little controversial, it's
Speaker 1: an easy way to explain this. The media prefrontal cortex
Speaker 1: is the middle of the brain and it does a
Speaker 1: lot of different things that governs creative self expression. In meditation,
Speaker 1: you're not doing anything creative. There's no self ne's expression.
Speaker 1: You're trying to forget this self. So this work from
Speaker 1: the brain turns off right. In flow, flow is nothing
Speaker 1: but creative self expression amplified all the way up to eleven.
Speaker 1: This part of the brain stays hyper echon. So that's
Speaker 1: what I mean by there are differences in meditation. You
Speaker 1: will drop the brain into alpha, for example, or theta
Speaker 1: and hold it there. Flow is an active state, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna bounce all over the brain wave map. We're
Speaker 1: going to drop into beata and back to alpha, theta
Speaker 1: and all over the place. And it's really about how
Speaker 1: you can transition between brainwave of states and get back
Speaker 1: to that baseline, not can you just hold yourself on
Speaker 1: that baseline. So there's differences, but one meditation is really
Speaker 1: good for training flow. We live in the world. If
Speaker 1: you live in a monaster area, that's your life. Meditation
Speaker 1: maybe for you, but as a general case, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to live in the world, I think flow is
Speaker 1: the more powerful tool and meditation is training for flow.
Speaker 1: There are other people who might invert it, right, like
Speaker 1: for example, yoga traditions. Why do you start physically with yoga?
Speaker 1: You start with physical yoga to exhaust the body, so
Speaker 1: then you can do meditate focus meditation afterwards. They think
Speaker 1: because people they are being monasteries and they privilege meditation,
Speaker 1: so they start with the body, put their body into flow,
Speaker 1: exhaust the brain, and then they meditate because it's easier.
Speaker 1: I live in the real world and I'm a bolder,
Speaker 1: active guy likes to get ship done. So like I
Speaker 1: inverted and that's how I think about it really. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: no one is not better than the other, depends on
Speaker 1: where you're trying to go. Got it. Well, you talk
Speaker 1: about living in the world and this fast paced world
Speaker 1: that we do live in and being goal oriented. So
Speaker 1: if someone's listening right now, that is that that's the
Speaker 1: way they feel that's who they are. How does one
Speaker 1: get into a flow state on with that kind of
Speaker 1: stimulation going on? M hm, well that's interesting, So let's
Speaker 1: just talk about how you get into a flow state
Speaker 1: first and then let's go to Okay, So flow states
Speaker 1: have triggers preconditions that lead to more flow. There are
Speaker 1: twenty two that have been discovered. It's probably way more,
Speaker 1: but there's twenty two we've discovered and they all essentially
Speaker 1: worked same way. So flow follows focus. It only really
Speaker 1: shows up when all of our attention is in the
Speaker 1: right here, the right now, on the present moment, on
Speaker 1: the task at hand. That's what the triggers do. They
Speaker 1: drive attention into the present moment, the right here, right now.
Speaker 1: They do it one of three ways. They either push
Speaker 1: dope me in into our system. They push nor ep
Speaker 1: and effron into our system. Both of these we talked
Speaker 1: about them earlier a little bit. These are they're performed
Speaker 1: that neural chemicals are multitools. They do a bunch of
Speaker 1: different stuff at once. But dope, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: makes us excited, It makes us pay attention, makes us
Speaker 1: want to make meaning out of the thing that's happening
Speaker 1: in front of us, and nor Ep and Effern kind
Speaker 1: of does more the same, and basically we just pay
Speaker 1: attention to whatever is in front of us. Or these
Speaker 1: triggers will lower cognitive load kinda loads all the crap
Speaker 1: you're trying to think about any one time. If I
Speaker 1: lower cognitive load, I liberate a bunch of energy that
Speaker 1: your ray will then repurpose for paying attention to whatever
Speaker 1: is in front of you. That's what the triggers do,
Speaker 1: some combination of one, two, or three of those things,
Speaker 1: and they come into varieties because flow comes into varieties.
Speaker 1: They individual flow, me in a flow state, you and
Speaker 1: a flow state, or group flow. This is interpersonal flow,
Speaker 1: me and you in a great conversation. A couple of
Speaker 1: hours go by and we don't even notice. That's inter
Speaker 1: personal flow. This could be group flow. You and your
Speaker 1: band on stage and everybody's flying perfectly together, perfectly sink
Speaker 1: the music is soaring, Or could be group flow at
Speaker 1: scale communityAs everybody in the audience is a giant concert.
Speaker 1: When you merge with the band and have the bands
Speaker 1: just clapping and sank and we're all one together and right,
Speaker 1: that's just group flow at scale communitas. So there are
Speaker 1: ten triggers that we know of for group flow, and
Speaker 1: there are twelve for individual flow. And so if you
Speaker 1: want more flow in your life, these triggers are your
Speaker 1: tool kit. Now you asked an interesting question, which is
Speaker 1: this what do we do in today's kind of fast
Speaker 1: paced world, and you actually have to it's kind of counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: Flow follows focus. The most important trigger is uh, complete concentration.
Speaker 1: Can I swear on your podcast? Yes? Please? So when
Speaker 1: I work with we do a lot of our with
Speaker 1: the organizations, and I, as I said, I'm an old
Speaker 1: school punk rocker, so there's only so much you can
Speaker 1: do with me. And I always tell people I'm not
Speaker 1: child proof. Don't bring me around your children. I'm not
Speaker 1: like I'm not safe. But like when I walk into organizations,
Speaker 1: I always tell people I'm gonna look. You can't put
Speaker 1: a sign in your office door. This is funk off.
Speaker 1: I'm flowing. You can't do this work like forgot about it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't like you need complete concentration. And what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Well, it means a couple of things. One
Speaker 1: distraction management. You want to close your door, You want
Speaker 1: to turn off yourself phone, you wanta turn off messages,
Speaker 1: you want to protect the container. You want to create
Speaker 1: an environment that maximizes complete concentration. This also includes having
Speaker 1: conversations ahead of time. I always tell people is the
Speaker 1: most important thing. Flow massively amplifies productivity. You will get
Speaker 1: time back in your life. Spend more time and flow.
Speaker 1: The result is you get more time back. But you
Speaker 1: have to do it a specific way. So I always
Speaker 1: tell people, talk to your kids, talk to your husband's,
Speaker 1: your wives, your spouses, your boss is, your coworkers. You
Speaker 1: get more of me later, but I need this now,
Speaker 1: so I can write that has to be the trade off.
Speaker 1: You have to have those conversations out loud. Otherwise people
Speaker 1: start like, what are you doing willing me off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the world for ninety minutes? And here's
Speaker 1: the other part, how much? How long? The human brain
Speaker 1: has been designed to focus for twenty minute periods in
Speaker 1: the same way that we have ram cycles ninety minutes,
Speaker 1: hundred twenty minutes of sleep right, dreaming, same we have
Speaker 1: focused cycles. That there's the same line. Monostory education is
Speaker 1: one of the highest flow environments on Earth. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons is it's built around minute periods of uninterrupted concentration.
Speaker 1: We're designed to focus for that long on single tasks.
Speaker 1: So we tell people when we train people, one of
Speaker 1: the most important things you can do is you want
Speaker 1: to work. You want to try to work in accordance
Speaker 1: with your circadian rhythms because it's hard to fight your
Speaker 1: own biology. Right, I'm an extreme lark. I wake up
Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning, three thirty in the morning,
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning, and I go to work
Speaker 1: and I'm happy as hell. My wife is a night out.
Speaker 1: She's not awake till like eight, nine, ten o'clock at night. Right,
Speaker 1: she does want to start working until then. So um,
Speaker 1: try to work in accordance with the kiddy and rhythms
Speaker 1: as you can and start your work period, practice distraction
Speaker 1: management ahead of time, and then nine in twenty minutes
Speaker 1: for on concentration. So that's like, you know, in a
Speaker 1: fast paced digital that's a hard thing to do, but
Speaker 1: it it's a huge benefit for flow work. How does
Speaker 1: flow really benefit, like you're saying, I mean, one benefit
Speaker 1: is you know, having being able to give more of yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, and and getting some time back in your life.
Speaker 1: Like what are the other benefits of flow that, like
Speaker 1: spill over into your relationships and other pieces of your life. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean relationships, you get more empathy, collaboration, cooperation, communication
Speaker 1: all sore when you're not when you're even when you're
Speaker 1: not in flow. So yeah, because there, well you have
Speaker 1: to remember that all of those things from a neurobiological
Speaker 1: standpoint are essentially like their patterns, their synapses, your building. Cooperation,
Speaker 1: as you know, is a habit. Good communication is a
Speaker 1: habit right there, So there's there's there's a skill portion
Speaker 1: of it. Empathy is a is a skill. Multip perspective thinking,
Speaker 1: the ability to see things from other people's perspectives is
Speaker 1: a skill set. And so when you spend time and
Speaker 1: flow and you can see it activates the part of
Speaker 1: brain that allows you to do it. You're training yourself
Speaker 1: to be more empathetic when you're out of flow as well.
Speaker 1: And I always tell people like, the more flow you get,
Speaker 1: the more flow you get. So if you're getting flow
Speaker 1: on the tennis court, you're probably now getting more flow
Speaker 1: as a musician. And when I get flow on the
Speaker 1: ski hill, I get more flow as a writer at it,
Speaker 1: and will flow as a scientist. Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's funny because being on stage, Like, I know I'm
Speaker 1: inflow often, but there are you talk about the prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex shutting down, there are so many times where my
Speaker 1: sense of self is still there, Like I can still judge,
Speaker 1: I can everything's going on and I can't shut that off.
Speaker 1: Is my prefrontal cortex basically not shutting down? Is that
Speaker 1: what's happening? That is sort of what is happening. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I like there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different Right, you're outside the challenge skills sweet spot usually, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what I was wondering. Yeah, you're you're and
Speaker 1: it's probably because there's stuff in your personal life leaking
Speaker 1: in and or there's too much physical exhaustion, there's stuff
Speaker 1: in your body, right, Like, it's just it's usually and
Speaker 1: it could be something like I was laughing, but decision fatigue.
Speaker 1: If you've made fifty or a hundred decisions during the day,
Speaker 1: you've now suffered division. And the problem is this when
Speaker 1: you burned out a little bit of energy. Flow is
Speaker 1: a high energy state. So when you have something like that,
Speaker 1: you don't have the energy to kind of get there.
Speaker 1: You can get there, and you sort of have to
Speaker 1: you usually physically, like, you'll ride the endorphins, and you'll
Speaker 1: probably get into flow towards the end of the show
Speaker 1: rather than early on. Right. Actually, by that point you've
Speaker 1: written the physical So I always say that if I
Speaker 1: can't get into flow skiing right by sixteen laps, I'm
Speaker 1: in flow no matter what. It doesn't matter. At that point,
Speaker 1: I am so exhausted that my system has to produce endorphins.
Speaker 1: There's other other things going on, but endorphins are like
Speaker 1: the slowest gateway into flow. I always feel bad for
Speaker 1: This is what endurance athletes and and and s and
Speaker 1: m folks have in common. They like to ride the
Speaker 1: endorphins and to flow. That's their trigger. I always feel
Speaker 1: bad for them because it's a really slow path. Because
Speaker 1: if you're a train bike rider, right, a trained cyclist
Speaker 1: or a train runner, and uh, you don't like you
Speaker 1: can go out and run ten miles, You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to run like fifteen miles to get that Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: now I'm tired. Now it's work. You're right. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to really push yourself, which is why you'll get
Speaker 1: into flow at the end of your you'll just tie
Speaker 1: yourself out at a certain point in your body will
Speaker 1: start producing the endorphins and then end of mine and
Speaker 1: it'll walk you in that way. The interesting you can
Speaker 1: shortcut it a little through rituals pre show rituals and
Speaker 1: things like that. You've probably noticed that sometimes but not always. No,
Speaker 1: not always. It does work sometimes, But it's interesting that
Speaker 1: you talk about when you're making decisions all the time.
Speaker 1: I've noticed that as I'm running a business, I'm constantly
Speaker 1: answering questions and doing a gazillion things, and then I'm
Speaker 1: going to go on stage that night. And I have
Speaker 1: noticed there have been over the past several years many
Speaker 1: ways I start texting my energy knowing that I have
Speaker 1: to go on stage because it's so important, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the train if you like, because I write
Speaker 1: it first thing in the morning. Like try to come
Speaker 1: mess with me after like eight thirty at night, Like
Speaker 1: ask my wife how well but that goes for her? Right?
Speaker 1: Or wake me out in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: see how well that's gonna go for you? Yeah, I will,
Speaker 1: Like I am ferocious in terms of protecting energy, just
Speaker 1: fierce about it. Well, and you're reminding me of that,
Speaker 1: so thank you, because I'm about to start going on
Speaker 1: tour again. I mean, you know, starting to play shows,
Speaker 1: and you're right, if I'm exhausted from the rest of
Speaker 1: the day, like it definitely emotionally drained. Like any of
Speaker 1: those things, it definitely plays into well, you have to
Speaker 1: the problem. One of the things is when you've done
Speaker 1: all that stuff, you have to shift your state before
Speaker 1: you can get into flow. You have to kick your
Speaker 1: brain into alpha. So like a focus meditation along walk
Speaker 1: in was a little nap. That's a meal, right, So
Speaker 1: that that really is your best is your best friend
Speaker 1: if you can shift state a little bit, So that
Speaker 1: really is the key, the first key to just starting
Speaker 1: to shift into flow. It's not in all situations, but
Speaker 1: you're talking about a particular situation, which is you've had
Speaker 1: a crazy day and then you have to actually drop
Speaker 1: into flow to perform and do your job late at night.
Speaker 1: Then like state shifting is pretty helpful on it because
Speaker 1: you need some kind of a reset. Interesting, this is
Speaker 1: all fascinating stuff to me. I feel like I get
Speaker 1: go on and on and on. One last question, what
Speaker 1: do you think of the biggest misconceptions people have around
Speaker 1: their potential? That's a great question. I always say that
Speaker 1: after thirty years of studying this stuff, there's like just
Speaker 1: a couple of big lessons. One is we are all
Speaker 1: capable of so much more than we know. And what
Speaker 1: I literally mean by that is human potentialism will, especially
Speaker 1: to ourselves, and it's invisible for two specific reasons. We
Speaker 1: only figure out what we're capable of by pushing on
Speaker 1: our skills to the utmost again and again and again.
Speaker 1: And that is makes the capability and emergent property. You
Speaker 1: have no idea like, you've got to level up your
Speaker 1: skills and that in your and you'll discover, oh wow,
Speaker 1: a little better or a little worse. And then right,
Speaker 1: it emerges out from that, but it goes even farther
Speaker 1: than that. This is not my research, but it's overwhelmingly clear.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of science that says you will not
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna like or what you're gonna be
Speaker 1: good at until after you try it and start getting
Speaker 1: better at it, even if you're talking about very adjacent skills.
Speaker 1: So let's say I don't know if it's true or not.
Speaker 1: Let's say you've never sung an opera before. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: an adjacent skill, right, You sing a lot but you've
Speaker 1: never sung opera? If as at Land can you? Can
Speaker 1: you sing opera? Will you like it? Do? The research
Speaker 1: shows that you can't answer the question. I go to
Speaker 1: Lebron James and say, Lebron, let's say he's never played Batman, Lebron,
Speaker 1: do you think you're gonna like Badman and be any good?
Speaker 1: The research is he can't even answer the question. You're
Speaker 1: talking about something that's like right next door to what
Speaker 1: you do, and you don't know if you're going to
Speaker 1: be good at it or if you're gonna like it
Speaker 1: until after this that even potential is literally invisible in
Speaker 1: that way, and you're really all gable more more more
Speaker 1: than I know. Yeah, I've got out of my way
Speaker 1: to meet the most extraordinary people who have lived over
Speaker 1: the past fifty years. That's what I basically did for
Speaker 1: a living, and I got to study them right, And
Speaker 1: nobody starts out extraordinary. Everybody starts out ordinary, right, you
Speaker 1: just become extraordinary. That's it's the same for everybody. I
Speaker 1: always say. The funniest thing about pick performance, it's really
Speaker 1: difficult to understand. Is it hard? Work works? Yes, it
Speaker 1: does right like nobody. But it's the one thing you want,
Speaker 1: like you know, when you read the R Been Possible
Speaker 1: and you look at like you get to the end,
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, there's six things to do every day,
Speaker 1: and there's about seven things today every weekend. That's what
Speaker 1: peak performances, right once you do the on boarding procedures,
Speaker 1: like biologically you got do these six things. You gotta
Speaker 1: do these seven things. But it's really all works that
Speaker 1: compound interest. It's not people. Well, occasionally at stepped up
Speaker 1: after I give a speech and say things like, what
Speaker 1: are the three things I can do Monday morning? And
Speaker 1: my answer is always if you're asking that question, you're
Speaker 1: not serious about this work. It's not three. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can give you three things to do Monday morning, but
Speaker 1: that's not the point. The point is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Speaker 1: Sunday repeat. And where it gets really interesting and really
Speaker 1: fun is two years in and three years in and
Speaker 1: five years in. I mean, yes, you'll get rewards three
Speaker 1: months in and six months and what, But it gets
Speaker 1: cool after long periods of time the final verse and
Speaker 1: then I'll shut up on this. But I always like
Speaker 1: to point this out to be because people forget, we
Speaker 1: never trust our own history. I've been asking for I've
Speaker 1: been asking people to tell me about the thing that
Speaker 1: happened that you did that really like wants you the
Speaker 1: college your proudest of and that when it was done
Speaker 1: changed everything afterwards. You learned so much along the way
Speaker 1: that everything performance changed forever. I have never in twenty
Speaker 1: five years of asking the question or somebody said, dude,
Speaker 1: there was this time I was walking across the bus station.
Speaker 1: I looked down, there's a lottery ticket, and my life there.
Speaker 1: It's always like, no, man, I lost my arm in
Speaker 1: a car crash and my father died and I had
Speaker 1: just support the kids and go to night school. And
Speaker 1: it took me seventeen years to get my degree. And
Speaker 1: now I'm Oprah's proctologists and look at me. I love Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the grit. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: day in and day out and the grit of it all.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that for me, I know how
Speaker 1: gritty I am. I know how much I just personally
Speaker 1: have gone through and survived and how I've come out
Speaker 1: the other side, and how I'm thriving in this part
Speaker 1: of my life and I've accomplished as a child and
Speaker 1: how I don't feel like that's even remotely close to
Speaker 1: what I can. And it's interesting that for me, grit
Speaker 1: has always been putting my head down and getting in
Speaker 1: there and doing the thing, doing the work, and daily
Speaker 1: chasing that high of getting better or accomplishing something little
Speaker 1: things on the daily especial mastery leads to flow is
Speaker 1: our favorite high. We like it more than all the
Speaker 1: other intrinsic motivators. We will take flow over sex and drugs.
Speaker 1: It's the most addictive state on earth, and when it's
Speaker 1: coupled to mastery, the most difficult thing about So I
Speaker 1: always say that the performers know something that everybody else
Speaker 1: doesn't know, which is always crawl, walk round. There's no shortcut, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's what performers know. Most people show up in a
Speaker 1: situation they're like, dude, I don't I don't crawl and
Speaker 1: I don't want to walk. I'm going to figure out
Speaker 1: how to start jogging. And you meet performers. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that people always says, how like you
Speaker 1: look so far ahead, how you get so And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons is they don't dick around at the
Speaker 1: front end. They're like, I know I'm gonna suck. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna suck. I'm gonna suck in one day, I'll be better.
Speaker 1: And they just started do it and like it doesn't right,
Speaker 1: So there's there's a lot of time saved on that one.
Speaker 1: I think, just sort of accepting that that's just going
Speaker 1: to be the experience of embrace the But it's also
Speaker 1: that's that's the front end. What the other half of
Speaker 1: it is. Experts always know that the ultimate danger is
Speaker 1: the addictiveness of progression. That right, Like, it's why athletes
Speaker 1: get hurt, it's why burnout happens. It's like, right, it's
Speaker 1: super that's the most addictive thing. And if things get
Speaker 1: really wayward when you're chasing progression, like people make bad
Speaker 1: decisions for sex, and they make bad decisions you know,
Speaker 1: over drugs sometimes, but man, I have made some really
Speaker 1: bad decisions in the name of progression. That's crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very true. I can I totally end stand that
Speaker 1: from my perspective. Flow is so interesting. Thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing the bits and pieces that we discussed here, and
Speaker 1: I know there's so much to discuss, but I just
Speaker 1: want to pivot into one thing because I always asked
Speaker 1: my guests about music, and I know you said you
Speaker 1: love music, so yeah, so I have to tell you
Speaker 1: you're an awful person. You're terrible, because I heard that
Speaker 1: you were going to ask me this question. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so mind you. I have now spent a month on
Speaker 1: your goddamn question, you mean, woman, a month. I got categories,
Speaker 1: I've got lists, i got vector diagrams. I love you. Okay,
Speaker 1: You're awful and here, so there's there's only this is
Speaker 1: the only way I could do it. I have chosen.
Speaker 1: I had to choose like my favorite song inside categories
Speaker 1: of music, and I've not allowed myself to choose covers. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So those are the caveats, and I've given you a
Speaker 1: month of my freaking life to get this answer to you.
Speaker 1: So no particular order because I can't pick an order.
Speaker 1: But we'll start with Tom Wade's Cold Cold Ground, Cold
Speaker 1: Cold Ground by Tom Waits in The Cold Cold Ground,
Speaker 1: Ground Ground Ground Rise against re Education through Labor Time,
Speaker 1: and that's the punk category. I'm telling you. I'm a
Speaker 1: huge punk rock interesting this Corrosion by the Sisters of
Speaker 1: Mercy and the Light Gos category. I'm an old god
Speaker 1: as well, so there's a god category in hip hop.
Speaker 1: It was until I collapsed by eminem and then you'll
Speaker 1: never say that I'm not killing them because when I'm not,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna stop kidding no me, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: pop and I'm just not deminem subliminal thoughts. When I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stop spending the women a point went spinning in Hoppin,
Speaker 1: I'm a trendling shot the Penicilly could not get sailing
Speaker 1: to stop a facility too. And then finally the last
Speaker 1: one was fake Plastic Trees by u Um Radiohead fud
Speaker 1: wanted We'll find You. I have left out both metal
Speaker 1: and reggae, which are two enormous categories of music for me. Um,
Speaker 1: I love you for doing that. I did my first
Speaker 1: Holy five and mind Go from Emotions. I tried that
Speaker 1: as a category I did. I just crazy by doing
Speaker 1: love song. I was like, okay, can we can do
Speaker 1: best love song, best time anger song, best heroic resignation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I tried that. Brains work very similarly in some ways
Speaker 1: because you have to do categories. I love it. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's funny. Well, thank you for spending a
Speaker 1: month on that. I appreciate it. I hate you. I'll
Speaker 1: take that as a compliment. Thank you so much. I
Speaker 1: really do appreciate it. Yeah, nice to meet you. Nice
Speaker 1: to meet you too. And that brings us to the
Speaker 1: end of this episode of Holy Human. I hope you
Speaker 1: found this conversation and Stephen as fascinating as I did.
Speaker 1: Please let me know your thoughts in the comments wherever
Speaker 1: you're listening, and share this with anyone who could use
Speaker 1: a little more full and productivity in their lives too.
Speaker 1: On our next Holy Human, I'll be joined by internationally
Speaker 1: acclaimed expert Bethany Webster for insight into healing the mother wound.
Speaker 1: She is quite amazing and this conversation was deep, so
Speaker 1: I'm just warning you now trigger warnings everywhere, but it's
Speaker 1: so good. Everyone has to listen to this episode. She
Speaker 1: believes that the mother wound is something that we have
Speaker 1: all inherited to varying degrees, and she'll join me to
Speaker 1: discuss why this is a core wound and how healing
Speaker 1: it helps us grow and emerge as our full selves.
Speaker 1: And Mom, if you're listening, you might not want to
Speaker 1: listen to this episode, or you might because we all
Speaker 1: have mother wounds and they've all been passed down from
Speaker 1: one generation to the next. So I think this is
Speaker 1: probably some of the most important work we will ever
Speaker 1: do and one of the most important episodes that you'll
Speaker 1: ever listen to. So join us next week. So join
Speaker 1: us next week on the next Holy Human. Holy Human
Speaker 1: with me Leanne Rhymes is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: You'll find Holy Human with Lianne Rhymes on the I
Speaker 1: Heart app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get the podcasts
Speaker 1: that matter most to you.