Steven Kotler | Performance Begins in the Mind

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Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Mala,
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and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
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authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from
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leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology,
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and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This
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is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change,
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helping you find alignment with the person you are always
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meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't
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just about thinking differently, but feeling differently. Science shows us
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that true change happens when we align not just our minds,
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but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts.
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This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
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and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind
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All access membership and community, a space designed to help
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you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live
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with greater clarity and purpose. With over one thousand hours
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of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs, You'll
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learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts in neuroplasticity,
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all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset
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and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your full potential.
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You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course
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we've ever produced, a Treasure Trouble Wisdom worth over ten
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thousand dollars in growing, plus live gatherings, and an inspiring
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global community to support your journey. If you're ready to
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step into a more heart centered, connected and conscious life,
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I invite you to join us. Clip the link to
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learn more and start your journey today. What if the
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biggest barrier to your potential isn't your skill, resources, or
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even your opportunities, but what you believe is possible. In
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today's conversation, I'm joined by Stephen Kotler, a leading expert
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on human performance, to explore the powerful connection between belief
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and achievement. We'll unpack the master Effect, the remarkable ship
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that happens when a single breakthrough shatters what the world
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thought was impossible. Stephen reveals the neuroscience behind wire beliefs
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shape our abilities, how flow states can overwrite limiting stories,
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and practical ways you can rewire your own mindset to
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expand what's possible in your life and work. If you've
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ever wondered how to push pass your limits and step
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into your next level of performance, this episode will give
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you both the science and the tools to get there.
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Let's dive in. My name is doctor Flee Mall your
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co host for the session, and I'm really thrilled to
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be here today with none other than Steven Coutler. Welcome Stephen.
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Good to be with you. Pleet. So, in your book
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The Art of Impossible, you explore the science and peak performance.
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So how significance is the role of beliefs, the beliefs
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we have, the beliefs we inherited that were conditioned into
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us in determining our ability to perform at that highest level.
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I think there's a two part answer to this question.
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Part one is helpful to talk about what psychologists call
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the Banister effect. So most people are from going with
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the Roger Banister ran the first sub four minute mile.
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The slightly larger version of the story is it took
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forever mile times dropped, you know, a fraction of a
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second a decade, for like eighty years before Banister does it,
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nobody believes you can do it. It's completely impossible. There are
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New York Times editorials written by doctors at the time.
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We say, the first person rounds a sub four mile
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is going to die, and you know you should have
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a hearse waiting from it. The finish line and Banister
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breaks the record, and that's amazing. But what's really interesting
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is what happens next. Within a month, else is reading
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this record. Within a couple of months, a bunch of
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other people who have done it, within a couple of years,
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teenagers have done it, women have done it. And you've
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got to ask yourself what changed?
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Right?
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The physical task of running a sub four mile remained
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the same. The only thing that changed was our belief.
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What was believed to be impossible became possible, and somethingly
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became possible for a whole lot more more people. This
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is known as a Banister effect, and we sort of
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understand why it happens. There's just a very tight correlation
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between our beliefs, our visual system, and our ability to
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enact on the world. That's part one. Part two is
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the thing that has come out of my research on
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aquam performance and especially the relationship of altered states like
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flow or even psychedelic experiences, or we can very quickly
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overwrite limiting beliefs and change limiting beliefs. So yes, on
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everything you said, NA, sure, nurture a million other things.
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I think flow these fate of all performance. There is
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a real big role a belief it's laid down, but
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I think that really important point is one it's very
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tied to performance, deeply tied to performance and what we
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can actually do in the world. And two it's very
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easy overwrite those beliefs if you know what you're doing.
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Well, let's talk about that. So we know from per
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neuroscience who've known this for a while what's called neuroplasticity,
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that the brain can change, our nervous system can be rewired,
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so to speak. And certainly I think the sign shows
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a flow states and a lot of your work around
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flow states facilitate that. But maybe if you could talk
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specifically how we dismantle beliefs that may be hampering our
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performance and can is that done just organically by being
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in flow states or do we need to like look
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at what are some of the specific beliefs that are
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holding us back and either deconstruct those or ride them
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or replace them. In the two beliefs, how does all
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this work.
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There's a bunch of different there's a million techniques here, right,
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and let's just start at the really simple A and
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work our way up to sort of more complicated techniques.
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And don't let me go on for too long to
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the end. That could go everywhere. But things that I
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think about on the front end, and one of the
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things that you know, my organization is lucky enough to
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train people in like one hundred and fifty countries, twenty
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eight industries, so we have a really good map of
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sort of globally what works what doesn't at a very
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diverse level. And as you mentioned, we focus on the
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neurobiology of peak performance. That's what we study, that's what
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we steer our trainings with. And on the low end,
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on the front end, is just like a simple filter
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when you're looking at Yes, I think it's helpful to
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look at your beliefs limited or not. And one of
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the things I always point out is people rarely trust
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their own history. Your own history is proof of what
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you can and can't do. It's really clear if you
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look at it, and most people never stop that, like
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people who live with a victim mindset, who think the world,
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you know, happens to them who have a fixed around
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learning and growth and talent and things like that often
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don't bother to look at their own life. Your life
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is a lot of layers. Is success that contradict your beliefs,
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especially as limiting beliefs. One of the first things I
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have people do is sort of do an inventory of
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like what you've actually achieved, the skills you sort of
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needed to achieve them, and how that list either matches
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up or doesn't matches up with your beliefs about yourself.
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So that's sort of really low under stuff at the
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really extreme und I don't know exactly, and I don't
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think anyb does. Where beliefs come from, So just nature
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some of goods nurture. We know that memory, the more
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neural coomicals that show up during experience, the better chance
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that experience has to going shortter molding to long arm storage.
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So one way or another, we can think of beliefs
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as very potent memories that act in a Baysian senses priors. Right,
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This is the thing that determines the probability of our
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predictions about the future, which is essentially what the brain
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is doing all the time. That's sort of how I
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think about those beliefs can overwrite them very quickly. And
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the really interesting proof there my lab where a paper
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a couple of years ago they showed up the neurosigns
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and bout behavior reviews and what happens in the Brandt
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first couple of seconds of flow. And one of the
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things that we learned in that paper and in doing
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that research is that flow over writes PTSD EESTSD is
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a very called a strong memory or a really strong
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belief about how the world is, and flow can overwrite
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it very quickly. This also I've worked with a number
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of and other branches in the military terrorist training camps.
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They are putting people into flow and then telling them
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what to believe. I always tell people when you're in flow,
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don't ever let make people make meaning for you, because
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you're very susceptible to setting up new beliefs. Flow, like
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many psychedelics and other altered states, seems to open up
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a neuroplastic window. On the back end of it. We
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don't know how long it's opened, like we have numbers.
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There's certain things. Academene, for example, opens a seventy two
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hour neuroplastic window, which is why it's so useful in
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the treatment of mental health disorders and things like that.
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Flow opens up a similar window. We don't know how
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long it is because it's probably correlated with how long
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you're in flow, how deep this date is. There's a
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bunch of different factors we have you have to determine,
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but it seems to open this window where we can
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overwrite well believe very quickly.
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Yeah, let me just ask you to begin with to
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fine flow. I do use flow in the sense of
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Chicks and Maholly's work or do you have your own definition?
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No?
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So there, Yeah, I don't.
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One of the difficulties in flow research is every ten
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years somebody tries to redefine and rename flow. The scientific
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definition of flow is an optimost state of consciousness where
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we feel our best and would perform our best. More specifically,
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it's any of those moments of wrapt attention, total absorption.
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So focus on the task and that action awareness starts
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to merge, your sense of self starts to diminish. Time
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passes strangely. Usually what happens is you just sew into
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what you're doing, just get sucked in. A couple hours
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go by. It feels like two minutes and throughout all
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aspects of performance. So that's mental, physical, and emotional performance
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all skyrocket. Skyrocket is not an exaggeration. I can go
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through various data on various numbers, but let's just say
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it optimizes for everything and it's available all of us,
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which is really cool. It comes built in as a
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built in feature of being human evolution. It's shaped all
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of us to get into flow, which picked all of
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us for optimal performance. So that's how I think a flow.
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We can go into greater detail in any which way
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you want.
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Yeah, let me ask a further question about that. So
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it seems maybe putting flow states on a spectrum somewhat probbly.
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There could be very spectrums in terms of intensity, but
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what is kind of breath to seem some flow states,
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they're often have to do with really challenging ourselves to
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the edge of our abilities with kind of some super focus,
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are very narrow flow states, very data rich field of awareness,
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but maybe not a lot of broader awareness, like really
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focused in some flow states seem to be broader, and
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then some of the states with that are induced by
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psychedelics like ketamine some other mystical states maybe more open
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and broader. And then there's a question of how much
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meta awareness is present in slow the awareness that want
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is inflow, the awareness of ones self inflow, the awareness
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of how that's moving or changing. So I wonder if
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you could talk.
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You have none of these fast answers. But let me
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the first question is you are absolutely sort of correct.
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We work with doctor Richard Husky a lot. In fact,
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the first few seconds Flow paper was written with him,
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and so he's done really interesting work on this, and
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we've done really interesting work on this a couple of
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papers coming out. Think of it as a search space.
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Right.
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With flow, it's very tast specific, so you have a
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tighter search space, but you have wild, almost psychedelic like connections.
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I'm using that term literally. When you look at psychedelics
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in the brain, do for wide search space. Right, The
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whole brain is active, The connections are everywhere, right, It's
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literally like a giant spider web of the brain, and
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that's what happens for the connections Flow same spider web,
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much smaller containers. So it's all your ideas are hanging along,
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new thoughts, new ideas, creativity, all that stuff, but it's
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on the task at hand. Now there are, so it
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gives you, just like a simple example from sport my
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own experience. What you're talking about is sometimes it broadens
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out and this happens. Most common flow stat on earth
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is reading. So I'm gonna give you a skiing example
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and a reading themble they're roughly the same. There's an
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experience you have and flow. I ever think of it
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as the high perch experience. There's no technical term for
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it that I know of, but you sort of get
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this feeling like I'm two hundred feet above my life
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and I can see the out to the horizon and
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you can in a much greater distance than before. It
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seems to happen and flow. And there's a bunch of
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reasons we could talk about why, but I won't go
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into that right now. But when you're reading and like
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an idea jumps together and something you're like wow, and
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your thoughts just go, that feels incredible. The expansive it's
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a very expansive flow state, that's what you're talking about,
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but it's still in that container of something spark by
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what you were reading. With skiing, when I'm on the
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hill right I'm skiing the bombs, I'm entirely focused on
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what I'm doing. But I get to the chair left,
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I'm still in flow, insiddinly, I'm one with the universe
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and I'm melting, and we know why all these things
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happen as well, and it tends to correlate with where
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attention goes. So one this is everything is very common
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and flow, and it works the same way as a meditation.
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If you're a Buddhist monk and you're meditating an absolute
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unitary being, you are one with the universe, right, slightly
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smaller sco you're Franciscan, none your experiences omia mystica. Now
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you're one with Jesus's luck. Maybe that's not quite as
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big as the incident of the universe, but it's a
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slightly smaller but it's still expansive container. I'm a surfer
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on a wave. I'm one with the way right, still
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expansive and intane in a weird way, but much smaller.
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So that's sort of how that works. In there. We
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understand the science that I can talk to the neurobiology
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of it like mystical experiences, and maybe they are maybe
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they speak of a higher connection, but we understand that
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there's biology that mediate them or possibly media they have connection.
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So I'll stop there. There's another part to your question,
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but I don't want to talk to your face offlet
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and I want.
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To get into maybe different means for accessing flow states.
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But before that, still looking at how flow states can
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help either deconstruct or override limiting beliefs that we have.
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And then we can also then talk about, you know,
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how do we end up outside of the flow states
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with belief Yeah.
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Let's in with Let's just talk you up beliefs about
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performance and flow in two parts because this is really
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actually probably I can get through this quickly and then
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we'll go to your next question. The first thing to
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know is that when we talk about flows AFWA performance,
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it's really optimal. So McKenzie did a study of top
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executives and flow. They were poor, being five hundred percent
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more productive than normal. The Department of Defense look at
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soldiers and flow doing skill acquisition tasks in they learn
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learn two hundred and forty to five hundred percent above
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normal work. My lab did aban uivers Is Sydney some
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of the Harvard Creativity Innovation, creative problem solving and decision
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making four hundred and seven hundred percent above baseline. Same
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thing happens to well being meaning purpose life statis fact.
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I can go on and on. We now know that
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flow doesn't just overwrite PTSD like I just mentioned. It
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is neuroprotective against burnoutchizophrenia, bipolar disorder, pretty act related stress conditions, depression,
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and anxiety, and really amazing like gat on that out
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of like ten thousand person twin studies and really solid,
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so amendous amount of stuff gets optimized. Learning was among them.
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So like low is this extraordinary state of performance and
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we see strength and stamina, fast, rich muscle response, et cetera.
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We perform at a I mean it's a step function
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worth of difference from how we normally behave. So the
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first thing that happens is we literally see ourselves performing
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at our best. Simultaneously. Blow amplifies memory. Why because five
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in those potent field good neurochemicals, the brain can produce
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all show up and flow. Right, it gets locked in
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if you want to, like, if close your eyes, think
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about your path, about all your happy memories. If you're
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thinking about something that is not pegged to a date,
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like an anniversary or a wedding or something like that,
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graduation as as are. You're remembering a flow state. This
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is what it does, locks an end to memory, and
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you're also locking that performance in the memory. This is
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serving a growth function ship except me, I other researchers
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pointed out that blow is the engine of adult development,
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and this way we'd go into flow, push our skills
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to the utmost, we level up. We see that performance
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and it gets cemented into memory and it's a various
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with really great feelings attached to it, right like it's
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an ecstatic state. So this is the foundation of or
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the overwriting of belief. That's what that's what's happening so fast,
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and that's why it's so tightly linked with performance. I
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want to take this one step further because this is
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essentially the reasons why affirmations, sorry Louise Hayes fail so miserably,
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and gratitude works so well. Affirmation we have an internal
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bullshit detector.
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You know this, we all know this.
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It's very strong, it's very loud. The affirmation. If I'm
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looking in the mirror and saying you were a millionaire,
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I'm a millionaire, I'm a millionaire, I'm a mallior. My
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brain is going buddy, your work at Walmart. What are
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you talking about? Totally demotivating. It's not going to get you.
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You know, this is not the secret. Right Gratitude works
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because if I look in the mirror and go I
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am so happy and grateful that I woke up this
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morning and I'm alive and I'm breathing, my brain goes, well,
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those things are true and those things are good. So
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maybe the world is a little less threatening, maybe you're
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a little more cable than you knit right does a
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bunch of foundational things. And to just take this one
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step further to typing the link between performance and belief
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and gratitude and belief. We did a really great stuff
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with doctor glam Fox is probably the worlds of the
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experts right now on the neuroscience gratitudes at USC. We
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found that subjects who have regular gratitude practices also are
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way more flow prone. So it's very simple, like, you
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want more flow in your life, one of the very
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simplest ways to do it is a daily gratity practice.
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How's all the other benefits of a gratitude practice, lower stress,
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all the psychological benefits, but it'll also make it you
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more flow prone.
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So absent flow and what a lot of people are
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dealing with, although we probably all have had glimpses of
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flow in somewhere or another, but you know, the limiting
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beliefs that often hamper our performance. To get in a
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way of optimizing our lives and experiencing results, we look
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for tend to be fear based. Again, as we spoke before,
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there's what we inherit genetically, what we inherit epigenetically. There's
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early childhood conditioning, there's our own adaptations to that, there's
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our societal conditioning as we start to go through school,
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all of that that influence these belief structures, and it's
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all influenced by what's called the negativity see assumption of
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risk and the brains need job one is survival forse pieces,
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so we focus more on threat than anything else. And
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so that's the kind of baseline to whatever degree. And
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of course, the more trauma you mentioned flow can over
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a trauma, the more trauma or PTSD either is, the
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more exacerbated all that's going to be. So when we're
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in a state of flow, contrary to that, we feel safe,
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we feel resourced, we feel connected, we don't feel afraid,
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we have this very positive experience. So it would seem
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that flow kind of overrides being in a moment of flow,
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can override all that conditioning, all that experience, all those
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belief structures, all that fear, and at least for a
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moment that we're in flow, we're not being very influenced
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by all that we're outside of that domain. And thus,
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and you said that in Prince's memories, so that could
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be you know, breading a new neurobio epids.
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I mean that said up, you just rephrased everything I
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spent the best head that it's saying in a sentence.
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Well done, but yes, exactly.
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So then how is the process then of accessing flow?
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And again we'll get into hacking flow and accessing flow
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in a minute, but being in flow, you know, let's
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say we have a meditation practice and we're able to
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kind of meditate our way into some quality of flow
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every morning, or we have a gratitude practice and we're
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accessing some color flow at least, you know, not maybe
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the super intense flow states, but we're getting to flow,
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or even we have some things that are inducing more
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intense flow states on a regular basis. But does that
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just automatically begin to cancel out. You know, twenty thirty,
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forty or fifty years of conditioning.
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Awesome question, and all right, we need to back up
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a handful of steps before we can answer this. Because one,
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there's one belief, just one. You meant you talked about
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flows at the recurrence in our lives. It's not we know,
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accept me how I figured this out back in the sixties.
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It's been proven again and again. We spend five to
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ten percent of our work life in flow, and without
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realizing it's a lot more common than people. First of all,
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that's micro flow, the low end of the flow scale.
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With flows core characteristics time dilation, the vanishing is self.
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You go to work, you sit down to rite an
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email to your colleague, goes to be a picky email,
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and you look up an hour later you've written an essay.
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Where did time go? And maybe your sense of self
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didn't totally go away, but when you pop into consciousness
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you have to We're like, wow, I got to go
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to the bathroom, so your bodily awareness certainly diminished. Right,
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that's microflow. Macro flow the really intense feels like a
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mystical experience. That's a rarer. Curren's for sure to be
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made more reliable and repeatable. But like, we're in microflow
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all the time, and blocking microflow is almost immediate symptoms
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of burnout. As you also pointed out, it's amazing. Sheck
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scept me how I did it expire. I'm back in
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the seventies. Two days of blocking microflow produced extreme burnout.
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And when I extreme burn out, the kind that comes
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with paranoia, self destructive behavior. I have been really interesting fact.
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And I mentioned this because I think our lives and
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our offices these days, our leader in our companies are
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designed to block microflow. So I think that's the condition,
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you know, And I think society contributes to all of.
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This, all the distraction, the continual distraction, the digital still.
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When I started training people and flow actively, it was
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the sort of let's say the late nineties, email existed,
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bones existed, people could knock on your door and you
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could get an SMS text message. Those are the distractions
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you have to block essentially to get work done. And
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today I just finished working with we don't like the
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name Management, a very big global consulting agency. Their topics
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that we're working at the c suite had an average
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of fourteen different communication channels that were required to open
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at all times, so like flack and WhatsApp and messages
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and email and like it was, we're like, you need
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complete concentration for flow. We got to talk about like
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some distraction management here, Where do you start? Comes right?
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In the modern world, it's a little crazy.
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Blow can take us out of an unresourced, fear based
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dade driven by oh, yeah you did in the robin
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the question what happens in terms of longer longer term? Yeah.
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So the two other things I want to mention around
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this one. If you have a dictim mindset, a external
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locus of control, it will completely block flow. The first
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then like you literally you can't. Your brain doesn't believe
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you can take charge of your life, so it won't
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expend the energy to try. Why burn the calories. So
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that's one limiting belief that has to get changed right away.
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If you really want an understanding of trauma, take a
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look at George Banano's work is the global leader in
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the study of trauma and resilience and stuff is awesome.
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Every time you retell a traumatic story, you are adopting
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a victim mindset, an external locus of control here and
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you were giving up all your power and you have
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to get out of this. You have to reframe that
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and get out of it. I don't think flow is
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going to help. I mean, flow can help prove to
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you that you're story is wrong, elevated for all that stuff,
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but you have to stop telling that story if you
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want to get pat that belief.
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Beliefs that are pretty predominant for human beings, I think,
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and get reinforced by society a lot outside of the
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existence of whatever levels of trauma, just a sense of
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I'm not enough unworthiness that most of us get, you know,
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arrive an adult with someone, and then we have a
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whole consumer society that's reinforcing that. You know, if you
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buy this, you might be enough shortly to be loved
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by somebody.
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And then, let me ask you, a Christian, I got
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to stop you there here. People say that crap all
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the time. I don't know anybody who like walks around
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and looks at stuff they can't buy and go, God,
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if I could just buy that thing I'm seeing in
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the advertise, when my life will be fulfilled. I mean,
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that's the message that people keep saying is happening in society.
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But I don't know anybody who's that dumb. Really, like,
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this is the first century. We understand advertising, we understand media.
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Kids get this stuff. They know they're being lied to.
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I don't think it's working that way. I think that's
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a straw dog people want to poke at. I think
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one who told you it was always going to feel
478
00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:08.319
good inside?
479
00:25:08.599 --> 00:25:09.559
What world is that?
480
00:25:09.720 --> 00:25:11.799
And you don't want it this way. It's like when
481
00:25:11.799 --> 00:25:13.240
I meet people who are like, I want to live
482
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:15.960
and flow all the time. No, you don't. All the
483
00:25:16.039 --> 00:25:19.559
information is in the difference. This is flow, this is
484
00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:22.799
normal life. This is like there's the richness of life,
485
00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:25.880
the experience. All that stuff is in the difference and
486
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:30.519
the variety. If it was permanent ecstasy, we would accultuate
487
00:25:30.599 --> 00:25:33.400
to the ecstasy and it wouldn't notice it very quickly.
488
00:25:33.720 --> 00:25:36.839
We only get to have experiences like flow and these great,
489
00:25:37.079 --> 00:25:39.799
wonderful experiences because of the difference. So I think there's
490
00:25:39.839 --> 00:25:41.519
a lot of I hear the height.
491
00:25:42.079 --> 00:25:42.640
I don't buy it.
492
00:25:42.759 --> 00:25:44.759
I don't think any of it's true. So it's not
493
00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:46.960
that I can't talk about some of this stuff, But
494
00:25:47.079 --> 00:25:49.559
I like the presuppositions in the questions I have to
495
00:25:49.640 --> 00:25:53.240
push back against. Now I have very strong opinions, they're
496
00:25:53.279 --> 00:25:55.720
often lessly held. So if you bring data and having
497
00:25:55.799 --> 00:25:58.119
to throw them out and have new opinions, but I
498
00:25:58.279 --> 00:26:00.000
have to push back on some of that stuff because
499
00:26:00.039 --> 00:26:02.720
there are performance consequences for all of it.
500
00:26:03.079 --> 00:26:06.440
Well, yeah, interestingly, I'm not prepared to put back with
501
00:26:06.519 --> 00:26:09.359
the data. But I do think that there's a certain
502
00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:13.240
base level of a lot of unworthiness or lack of
503
00:26:13.319 --> 00:26:14.960
self worth that a lot of people experience. But my
504
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:17.480
basic question, we can argue about what's you know before,
505
00:26:17.960 --> 00:26:21.720
but inflow, you're not experiencing that. Inflow, the question of
506
00:26:21.799 --> 00:26:24.039
worth is not there, or you're feeling a natural sense
507
00:26:24.039 --> 00:26:27.599
of okayness and self worth. My question is beyond the flow.
508
00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:31.359
The more people have these flow experiences, does that then
509
00:26:31.599 --> 00:26:35.720
reinforce in your work. They're a sense of innate goodness,
510
00:26:35.799 --> 00:26:38.839
innate confidence, innate self worth, so that it becomes less
511
00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:41.119
of a question in their life and they're oriented more
512
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:44.559
towards sort of manifesting from that rather than trying to
513
00:26:44.720 --> 00:26:47.960
confirm their worthiness in their life.
514
00:26:48.519 --> 00:26:53.799
Do answer to that question? One blow blow is usually taught.
515
00:26:53.880 --> 00:26:57.119
It's usually type of goal directed behavior, right and we're
516
00:26:57.160 --> 00:26:59.759
sort of goal directed machines as humans, and in flow
517
00:26:59.799 --> 00:27:02.079
you'll complish of great deal. Productivity goes up according to
518
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:04.319
McKinzie five hundredercent of bok baseline, and that tracks with
519
00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:06.640
our data and what our clients experience and things like that,
520
00:27:07.240 --> 00:27:11.839
And so flow itself may not override the belief, but
521
00:27:12.119 --> 00:27:16.880
success proof of productivity, proof of I am denting the universe,
522
00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:18.400
I'm getting through everything I might to do list, I'm
523
00:27:18.440 --> 00:27:21.759
hiding my goals and aiding my goal. That coupled with
524
00:27:21.960 --> 00:27:28.240
flow becomes this like feedback loop. That's confidence. And interestingly,
525
00:27:28.799 --> 00:27:30.559
we know, well, okay, I'm not going to go there.
526
00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:32.319
Let me tell you the other thing I can answer
527
00:27:32.359 --> 00:27:35.920
about this. So this is interesting. We you know what
528
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:39.680
emotional set points are the client for me, Okay, when
529
00:27:39.759 --> 00:27:42.680
we're usually buy around between nine and twelve, we have
530
00:27:42.799 --> 00:27:45.400
emotional set points. This is the low point in our life,
531
00:27:45.480 --> 00:27:47.839
the worst we're ever going to feel. This is the highpoint,
532
00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:50.839
look best we're going to feel, and we live gerally
533
00:27:50.960 --> 00:27:54.519
in between. Right and nobody knows exactly why they set up.
534
00:27:54.559 --> 00:27:58.000
There's nature nurture arguments, but we do know that there's
535
00:27:58.240 --> 00:28:01.799
only a couple ways to move them. On the low end,
536
00:28:02.319 --> 00:28:04.839
you can actually start to feel worse. It's very hard,
537
00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:08.279
but the death of a child and chronic unemployment will
538
00:28:08.359 --> 00:28:11.599
do it. They'll move the bar move down. The only
539
00:28:11.720 --> 00:28:14.319
way we know to move the bar up is repeated
540
00:28:14.359 --> 00:28:19.200
access to flow. So that does seem to do something
541
00:28:19.319 --> 00:28:22.880
over time to happiness well being. I would also guess
542
00:28:22.920 --> 00:28:26.480
you're asking what question about confidence? I haven't seen exact data,
543
00:28:26.559 --> 00:28:28.759
but I think the combination of the gold director feedback
544
00:28:28.799 --> 00:28:30.920
looop that I'm talking about in the upper bandwidth of
545
00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:35.319
human experience expanding. I think the answer is yes, but
546
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:37.799
I don't you know, I don't have exact data because
547
00:28:37.799 --> 00:28:38.599
I don't think it was low.
548
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:43.119
And so let's stark a accessing flow in order to
549
00:28:43.359 --> 00:28:45.960
enhance our performance. We want to perform at our best.
550
00:28:46.359 --> 00:28:48.839
We'd like to maybe even achieve peat performance in whatever
551
00:28:48.880 --> 00:28:53.160
aspects of our life, and that might lead to successful outcomes. However,
552
00:28:53.240 --> 00:28:55.680
we define that for ourselves. So what might be some
553
00:28:55.799 --> 00:28:59.839
of the best methods or available methods for people to
554
00:29:00.519 --> 00:29:03.400
spend more time and flow? And I assume that if
555
00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:06.880
you spend more time in various levels of flow, that's
556
00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:10.599
going to increase neuroplasticity. It's going to overall get your
557
00:29:10.680 --> 00:29:13.640
neural networks reshaped in a direction where you're going to
558
00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:17.680
overall have more access to flow, less tendency to move
559
00:29:17.759 --> 00:29:20.799
into out of flow and interfere. And so how does
560
00:29:20.839 --> 00:29:22.680
that process work and why it might be some of
561
00:29:22.720 --> 00:29:24.799
the levers. So what might be some of the specific
562
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:28.720
tools that people can use to build their capacity in
563
00:29:28.799 --> 00:29:29.279
that direction.
564
00:29:29.519 --> 00:29:31.880
It's about a dozen different answers in that, but let
565
00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:35.519
me just start simply. Which is the first thing to
566
00:29:35.640 --> 00:29:38.440
know is that flow states have triggers. These are preconditions
567
00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:41.680
that lead to more flow. There are oney eight that
568
00:29:41.759 --> 00:29:43.920
have been discovered. There are probably way more, but that's
569
00:29:43.960 --> 00:29:47.680
what we know about the common to varieties individual triggers
570
00:29:47.720 --> 00:29:49.599
that will drive me into flow or you into flow.
571
00:29:49.720 --> 00:29:52.440
And then there's a shared collective version of a flow state.
572
00:29:52.519 --> 00:29:54.599
If it's two people talking, right, they get lost in
573
00:29:54.680 --> 00:29:58.279
conversation outgors by its interpersonal flow. When it's a team
574
00:29:58.440 --> 00:30:01.720
a fourth quarter comeback in football, are a band, you know,
575
00:30:01.880 --> 00:30:05.680
totally tightening sanc or improv comedy, that's group flow or
576
00:30:05.759 --> 00:30:08.880
team flow. And then it's scale when it's like everybody's
577
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:11.160
a rock concert you're all clapping and sinking merge with
578
00:30:11.200 --> 00:30:14.720
the music. That's sort of that's communitos group flow at scale.
579
00:30:15.079 --> 00:30:18.359
But the triggers are on either side of the equation,
580
00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:21.559
but essentially, under the hood they all work the same way.
581
00:30:21.640 --> 00:30:24.039
Flow follows focus. It can only show up when all
582
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:26.279
of our attention isn't the right here right now. That's
583
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:28.480
what all the triggers do. They help us drive our
584
00:30:28.519 --> 00:30:32.279
attention into the present moment. Neurobiologically, they do it one
585
00:30:32.319 --> 00:30:35.440
to three ways. The leader pish dopely indoor system, pushing
586
00:30:35.559 --> 00:30:37.799
ra app and effort indoor system, or lower coggy the
587
00:30:37.880 --> 00:30:39.920
load you know, probably of those all the crap I'm
588
00:30:39.960 --> 00:30:42.240
trying to think about any one time. If I lower it,
589
00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:44.640
what I do is I liberate energy and the brain
590
00:30:44.680 --> 00:30:47.240
immediately will repurpose it for paying attention. So that's how
591
00:30:47.319 --> 00:30:50.920
that one works. And there's some combination, some trigger two
592
00:30:51.039 --> 00:30:54.200
or three of those effects. But anyways, this is how
593
00:30:54.279 --> 00:30:58.720
we drive flows. So the most obvious thing here is
594
00:30:58.799 --> 00:31:01.279
to start of a start completely concentration as a flow trigger.
595
00:31:01.839 --> 00:31:04.680
And obviously, and what that really means in the real
596
00:31:04.759 --> 00:31:07.559
world is we must practice. We talked about it earlier
597
00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:11.680
distraction management. So you know, when I sit down to
598
00:31:11.799 --> 00:31:14.960
write a book or put together a powerport presentation, I'm
599
00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:18.839
currently off myself, turning off email. All of my messages
600
00:31:19.160 --> 00:31:22.200
get turned off. I keep one emergency channel of communication
601
00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:25.400
open with my CEO, my wife, and a couple of
602
00:31:25.599 --> 00:31:27.839
my parents and a couple other people. There's everything else
603
00:31:27.880 --> 00:31:33.200
is shut down. That's distraction management. Knowing what I'm doing,
604
00:31:33.319 --> 00:31:35.559
having a clear goal for the thing I'm doing, so
605
00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:38.400
I know what to put my attention to. That's distraction management.
606
00:31:38.799 --> 00:31:41.519
That's one way to think about complete concentration. We can
607
00:31:41.599 --> 00:31:43.480
take it a step further because you can ask, well,
608
00:31:43.519 --> 00:31:47.200
how long do I concentrate or to maximize blow? And
609
00:31:47.400 --> 00:31:49.720
here you can't fight your biology. You should work with
610
00:31:49.799 --> 00:31:52.519
your biology. And we know we have ninety toe he
611
00:31:52.599 --> 00:31:55.640
and ten minute focus cycles much the same way we
612
00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:58.440
have ninety one to ten minute RAM cycle streaming cycles. Right,
613
00:31:58.480 --> 00:32:00.599
we have an awaken alert and a focus as well,
614
00:32:00.799 --> 00:32:03.279
but ninety minutes long. This is to say your brain
615
00:32:03.799 --> 00:32:08.240
has a pre existing slot we're paying attention to ninety minutes. Now,
616
00:32:08.599 --> 00:32:10.839
this gets fractured in the modern world, and a lot
617
00:32:10.880 --> 00:32:13.279
of people don't believe they have this. But you'll find
618
00:32:13.400 --> 00:32:16.839
if you start walling yourself off from the world that
619
00:32:17.119 --> 00:32:20.759
sort of trying to maximize complete concentration, you're gonna slip
620
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:24.480
towards that ninety minutes very naturally and easily, because we're
621
00:32:24.599 --> 00:32:28.000
designing for it. That's a really simple example. Then there's
622
00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:34.440
a whole bunch of this so called dopamine triggers. Novelty, complexity, unpredictability, risk,
623
00:32:34.519 --> 00:32:36.680
This could be physical risks, this could be social risk.
624
00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:38.559
Fear of public speaking is the number one fear in
625
00:32:38.599 --> 00:32:41.480
the world. I don't recognition. Why is reading such a
626
00:32:42.079 --> 00:32:45.279
powerful flow state? When we connect ideas together, that little
627
00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:47.799
rusher pleasure we're getting done across the puzzles stoke you
628
00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:49.599
fill in an ass so you get that rusher pleasure.
629
00:32:49.640 --> 00:32:53.599
That's dopamine, and it's tightening focus and ampling on pattern recognition,
630
00:32:54.240 --> 00:32:56.599
on alvinist drive further and to flow. So there's a
631
00:32:56.640 --> 00:32:59.920
bunch of triggers that work that way on I mean,
632
00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:03.559
is a really crucial flow trigger. So little no fact
633
00:33:03.599 --> 00:33:08.359
that autonomy is coupled in the brain or biologically to attention.
634
00:33:09.119 --> 00:33:12.039
If you your belief, you like I don't I want
635
00:33:12.079 --> 00:33:15.039
to do this, you can maximize attention. If you don't
636
00:33:15.079 --> 00:33:17.000
want to do something, if it doesn't align with where
637
00:33:17.039 --> 00:33:20.039
you want to go in your life, cannot maximize attention,
638
00:33:20.319 --> 00:33:21.640
which is why I always tell people if you have
639
00:33:21.720 --> 00:33:24.039
to do a task that you're really not into, like
640
00:33:24.119 --> 00:33:28.680
boss gives you an assignment something along those lines, reframe it. Say, Okay,
641
00:33:28.799 --> 00:33:31.240
ninety percent of this task is crap, I could care less,
642
00:33:31.480 --> 00:33:33.279
But like ten percent of it, it's going to make
643
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:37.920
me a better speaker, communicator, more empathetic, a better sales
644
00:33:37.960 --> 00:33:40.240
first or whatever. It is a thing that aligns with
645
00:33:40.319 --> 00:33:43.359
your purpose and your greater you know, passions, And really
646
00:33:43.519 --> 00:33:46.039
that's the because that's the only you can maximize attention.
647
00:33:46.359 --> 00:33:49.039
So there's a bunch more, but I gave you, you know,
648
00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:51.279
a bunch of different things to sort of work with.
649
00:33:51.920 --> 00:33:54.240
I want to speak into the last thing you said,
650
00:33:54.279 --> 00:33:57.640
because it's a I think it's wrong. You said that
651
00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:02.119
regular access to flow is going to diminish fear. Now
652
00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:04.920
I don't think that's true. It diminishes fear when you're
653
00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:07.839
in the state, and it makes me more confident over time.
654
00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:10.719
But the reason I'm not one hundred percent it's true
655
00:34:10.880 --> 00:34:14.039
is the most important flow trigger. What's long when called
656
00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:17.679
the golden rule of flow is the challenge skills balance.
657
00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:21.199
The idea here is we can maximize focus and attention
658
00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:22.960
on the task and hand when the challenge of the
659
00:34:23.039 --> 00:34:26.719
task slightly exceeds our skill set. So you want to
660
00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:30.719
spretch but not snap. Basically, if I were to put that,
661
00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:33.760
describe that emotionally, I'd say it's not exactly a dead
662
00:34:33.880 --> 00:34:38.000
center between, but it's near the midpoint between boredom there's
663
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:41.440
not enough stimulation here, can't pay any attention, and anxiety
664
00:34:41.599 --> 00:34:45.679
whoa too much stimulation and too much attention. In between
665
00:34:45.840 --> 00:34:48.519
is what's known as the flow channel, this sweet spot
666
00:34:48.559 --> 00:34:52.119
to maximize flow. But it's usually about like when the
667
00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:55.960
challenge is like five percent greater than your skills. Now
668
00:34:56.239 --> 00:34:58.599
that doesn't sound like a lot, but here's the question
669
00:34:58.639 --> 00:35:00.960
about fear that I want to raise is once you're
670
00:35:00.960 --> 00:35:05.039
five percent greater than your skills, especially if you're shy, timid, meek,
671
00:35:05.199 --> 00:35:08.199
or like doing something like maybe you're not super well
672
00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:11.159
versed and new to the desk, that's the point where
673
00:35:11.159 --> 00:35:13.800
you're going to be uncomfortable. You're outside your comfort zone.
674
00:35:13.800 --> 00:35:17.280
So you've got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. So
675
00:35:17.719 --> 00:35:20.400
it's not that you feel less fear, it's that your
676
00:35:20.559 --> 00:35:24.719
relationship to fear changes. I always say this one of
677
00:35:24.760 --> 00:35:27.480
this is one of our commonalities among the world's pop performers,
678
00:35:27.519 --> 00:35:29.760
and there aren't that many. The couple of them are.
679
00:35:30.159 --> 00:35:33.840
It really all started as as ordinary people. That's one right,
680
00:35:33.960 --> 00:35:38.119
they climb this challenge, skills ladder and flow or its extraordinary.
681
00:35:38.199 --> 00:35:40.480
That's how progress gets made that way.
682
00:35:41.039 --> 00:35:42.639
But every one of.
683
00:35:42.679 --> 00:35:46.320
These people, and myself included, will use fear as a compass.
684
00:35:47.239 --> 00:35:49.400
So it's not that there's less fear, it's that you
685
00:35:49.519 --> 00:35:51.079
learn to work with it. Why would you use fear
686
00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:53.079
as a compass? Why would you go in the direction
687
00:35:53.239 --> 00:35:56.559
of fear. So the brain is two percent of our
688
00:35:56.599 --> 00:35:58.719
body mouths, but it uses twenty five percent of our
689
00:35:58.840 --> 00:36:01.119
energy at rest and way more when we're doing a task.
690
00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:03.719
One of the biggest things the brand can ever do
691
00:36:04.159 --> 00:36:08.639
is pay attention. It's very expensive, your focused attention, right,
692
00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:12.920
So anytime you can get attention for free, the big deal.
693
00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:15.679
From a performance standpoint, you'll have more calories, you'll have
694
00:36:15.800 --> 00:36:20.079
more energy, so performers will use So I'll give you
695
00:36:20.119 --> 00:36:22.960
an example. Every time I write a book, there's a
696
00:36:23.119 --> 00:36:26.599
challenge you see the communication of the ideas and maybe
697
00:36:26.599 --> 00:36:29.679
even the style of the book. But there's a challenge
698
00:36:29.719 --> 00:36:31.760
that I see, which is, oh, if I have to
699
00:36:31.800 --> 00:36:33.920
write this book, I have to level up my writing
700
00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:35.920
skills and learn how to do this and this, and
701
00:36:36.039 --> 00:36:38.400
while those things are really hard, and isn't this scary?
702
00:36:38.840 --> 00:36:42.559
That's the challenge I see because it focuses my attention
703
00:36:42.920 --> 00:36:46.840
on something that way. So it's yes, you are right
704
00:36:46.920 --> 00:36:50.840
that you do end up so overwriting fears, but you
705
00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:53.960
run right into the next one. It like, you level
706
00:36:54.079 --> 00:36:56.199
up and you just here's what's the next challenge. I
707
00:36:56.280 --> 00:36:59.079
know it's going to be scary. Fear the bad feeling
708
00:36:59.159 --> 00:37:03.800
inside doesn't go away. What instead happens is your bad
709
00:37:03.800 --> 00:37:05.719
feeling comes inside and then you get another fear lang,
710
00:37:05.719 --> 00:37:07.760
which is the sense of belief of oh, I've felt
711
00:37:07.800 --> 00:37:09.599
this before, and I know I can deal with it.
712
00:37:09.719 --> 00:37:12.679
I know exactly what to do, and it doesn't mean disaster.
713
00:37:13.159 --> 00:37:17.079
It's giving me some focus that the way you communicate
714
00:37:17.199 --> 00:37:19.880
with fear, fear becomes something of an app and develop.
715
00:37:20.280 --> 00:37:22.440
Yeah, I think that's a very important distinction. In many
716
00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:25.320
spiritual traditions, the idea of fearlessness is not the absence
717
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:27.920
of fear, but it's a different relationship with fear, as
718
00:37:27.960 --> 00:37:31.519
you're pointing out. So I guess what I'm also pointing
719
00:37:31.559 --> 00:37:33.519
to is a couple of different directions, Like so what
720
00:37:33.639 --> 00:37:37.639
I'm hearing is in terms of goal oriented flow, like
721
00:37:37.880 --> 00:37:39.280
to make use of in your.
722
00:37:39.239 --> 00:37:42.719
Work and other always always goal, it's always well.
723
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:44.800
I'll have a question about that in the moment. So
724
00:37:45.400 --> 00:37:49.079
eliminate distractions as much as you can train yourself in
725
00:37:49.320 --> 00:37:52.400
focus and concentration. These things are going to help you
726
00:37:52.760 --> 00:37:54.920
be able to get into a state of flow and
727
00:37:54.960 --> 00:37:58.400
accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. And then the reason
728
00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:01.920
I'm asking these other questions about, you know, beyond flow
729
00:38:02.039 --> 00:38:06.320
experiences like are there actual lasting changes in the neural
730
00:38:06.400 --> 00:38:10.000
structure of the brain and if that's the case, also
731
00:38:10.159 --> 00:38:13.719
comparing the kind of work oriented flow, goal or employee
732
00:38:13.719 --> 00:38:17.400
you're talking about experiences like you alluded before in Kedemene
733
00:38:17.440 --> 00:38:21.280
assistant psychotherapy. I've experienced the integration of Ketymene and I
734
00:38:21.360 --> 00:38:23.280
have past some retreats in the last couple of years
735
00:38:23.719 --> 00:38:27.719
deep meditative experiences of what are usually considered somebody very
736
00:38:27.800 --> 00:38:32.239
deep states of unitary consciousness or other types of peak
737
00:38:32.320 --> 00:38:37.239
experiences many people report, and in my own experience, there
738
00:38:37.320 --> 00:38:41.719
are some ways that just fundamentally changes your relationship to death,
739
00:38:41.800 --> 00:38:44.960
for example, or to other things, to where you really
740
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:48.320
do have a different posture or way of being in
741
00:38:48.400 --> 00:38:51.039
relationship to yourself, to life, to death to what people
742
00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:54.440
often have an ongoing, abiding fear about.
743
00:38:54.920 --> 00:38:58.400
Yes, I mean not new information. William James pointed this
744
00:38:58.440 --> 00:39:01.480
out in the Varieties of religious experienperience, right. He said,
745
00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:03.960
say what you want about these experiences, but they are
746
00:39:04.079 --> 00:39:08.599
psychologically real. We come out the other radically different people
747
00:39:08.679 --> 00:39:10.000
with radically new beliefs.
748
00:39:10.480 --> 00:39:10.760
Flow.
749
00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:13.320
You know, these are all the north the happy experiences
750
00:39:13.400 --> 00:39:15.320
we talked about and like I heard about in Stealing
751
00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:19.760
fire right, grant states, mystical states, flow states, psychedelics, they're
752
00:39:19.800 --> 00:39:22.920
all related. They're very very similar in the brain. Similar
753
00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:27.800
things are happening neurobiologically. You can do comparison contrast studies,
754
00:39:28.239 --> 00:39:30.599
and you know, we've done really fun studies with like
755
00:39:30.639 --> 00:39:33.400
Imperial College in London where we looked at psychedelic states
756
00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:34.519
versus flow states.
757
00:39:34.599 --> 00:39:35.400
What are they good for?
758
00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:39.960
Like are psychedelic states better for? Like they're better than
759
00:39:40.039 --> 00:39:43.880
flow If you want to experience synesthesia, have a mystical experience,
760
00:39:44.039 --> 00:39:46.960
or have a negative experience, they have the upper hand
761
00:39:47.119 --> 00:39:51.039
if you are looking for creative problem solving or things
762
00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:52.679
like that, flow is better and so you can do
763
00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:56.480
these kinds of studies now. But clearly all of them
764
00:39:57.039 --> 00:40:00.599
are psychologically real at having a deep impact. You pointed
765
00:40:00.639 --> 00:40:04.920
out a lot of them kind of actively override really
766
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:08.239
deep like deep beliefs, right like our you know, our
767
00:40:08.320 --> 00:40:09.519
innate fear of death.
768
00:40:10.039 --> 00:40:11.960
Yeah. So another way to talk about this is the
769
00:40:12.039 --> 00:40:14.519
idea of states and trade. So when we're in a
770
00:40:14.559 --> 00:40:17.039
state of flow, that's a state. So in terms of
771
00:40:17.239 --> 00:40:19.840
training myself to be a high performer, if that's one
772
00:40:19.880 --> 00:40:23.039
of my goals, what is a process and a pathway
773
00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:28.360
of turning flow states into traits? There's another way to kind.
774
00:40:28.239 --> 00:40:31.559
Of what I've been asking, yes again, I mean like
775
00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:35.320
and we've been answering, like viewed a reliable experience of
776
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:38.760
flow or any of these you know, more positive states.
777
00:40:39.440 --> 00:40:41.679
You know, this is at a certain level, this is
778
00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:44.760
no different than Barbara Fredericks's wonderful work on the broad
779
00:40:44.800 --> 00:40:47.840
and build theory, right where you have positive experiences and
780
00:40:47.960 --> 00:40:49.880
they build on each other and they expand and they
781
00:40:49.960 --> 00:40:51.639
build on each other and they expand.
782
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:52.440
Right.
783
00:40:53.000 --> 00:40:56.559
I think of it often in terms of Stephen Johnson's work.
784
00:40:57.199 --> 00:41:00.119
You know about these states unlock the adjacent possible, so
785
00:41:00.199 --> 00:41:03.800
we have a larger selection of things to work with it.
786
00:41:03.880 --> 00:41:04.519
This is interesting.
787
00:41:04.599 --> 00:41:06.880
So this is related to an older question you asked
788
00:41:07.039 --> 00:41:08.599
in one way I like to think about it. So
789
00:41:09.039 --> 00:41:13.199
we talked about George Bonano's wonderful work on resilience. Resilience
790
00:41:13.320 --> 00:41:15.760
is really hard to train. Oddly, one of the only
791
00:41:15.800 --> 00:41:18.719
ways you can actually train resilience is through training flow,
792
00:41:19.239 --> 00:41:24.239
and the reason is resilience is actually adaptive flexibility. So
793
00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:28.280
you hear things like, oh, meditation is really good for
794
00:41:29.199 --> 00:41:33.960
screening resilience sometimes, but if you have really racing thoughts
795
00:41:34.039 --> 00:41:37.360
and you're in distress, meditation is actually going to make
796
00:41:37.440 --> 00:41:40.719
them echo louder and make you worse. And so it
797
00:41:40.840 --> 00:41:44.719
won't always help flow because it's optimal performance, and a
798
00:41:44.760 --> 00:41:49.199
lot of stuff gets optimized, right, you're adaptively flexible. So
799
00:41:49.760 --> 00:41:54.239
in a weird way, portion of like overriding beliefs and
800
00:41:54.360 --> 00:41:56.480
resilience and things we've been talking a lot about and
801
00:41:56.559 --> 00:41:58.079
you've been asking you about. We've been trying to probe
802
00:41:58.119 --> 00:42:00.920
and poke into. It's the coffee. It's even it's not
803
00:42:01.159 --> 00:42:03.880
even like, oh the fear won't be there or this
804
00:42:04.039 --> 00:42:07.719
won't suck. Those things don't go away. It's the I've
805
00:42:07.760 --> 00:42:11.440
got to adaptive flexibility. No matter what direction the ship
806
00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:14.840
storm comes, I got a shield and a sword right
807
00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:17.719
and can fight back. It's sort of how I'm thinking
808
00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:18.880
about it. Does that make sense?
809
00:42:19.239 --> 00:42:22.639
Absolutely so. In one of your books, you've talked about
810
00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:25.519
a habit of inferiority that people deal with. You've been
811
00:42:25.599 --> 00:42:28.800
referencing also earlier in our conversation the kind of victim
812
00:42:28.880 --> 00:42:31.960
mindset where we have the external locus of control. I mean,
813
00:42:32.039 --> 00:42:35.480
this is pretty predominant, I think. And what's the process
814
00:42:35.639 --> 00:42:38.159
of people really shifting out of there? I mean my
815
00:42:38.280 --> 00:42:40.199
book and kind of what I focus a lot of
816
00:42:40.199 --> 00:42:42.280
my work on. My book is called radical responsibility, and
817
00:42:42.320 --> 00:42:45.400
it's all about not living your life from that state,
818
00:42:46.039 --> 00:42:49.320
but you know, inviting people into that level of ownership,
819
00:42:49.760 --> 00:42:51.639
which has nothing to do with obviously it's not about
820
00:42:51.639 --> 00:42:53.760
blaming others, but it's not about self playing. It's really
821
00:42:53.920 --> 00:42:57.800
ownership because that's where our power. So embracing the internal
822
00:42:57.880 --> 00:43:01.000
locals and control and embracing autonomy and racing agency, all
823
00:43:01.039 --> 00:43:03.480
these things and seeing the power of choice. How do
824
00:43:03.559 --> 00:43:06.440
people make that shift when they've kind of developed habits
825
00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:07.360
of victim mindset?
826
00:43:07.440 --> 00:43:10.760
Thinking, great question, So that's another habit in feriority you're
827
00:43:10.760 --> 00:43:13.000
telling you about. This is another William James turn, the
828
00:43:13.079 --> 00:43:17.840
great William James with something he pointed out and his example,
829
00:43:17.960 --> 00:43:20.239
which I think is still irrelevant today when he was
830
00:43:20.280 --> 00:43:22.800
talking about it, is like most people don't even know
831
00:43:22.880 --> 00:43:26.119
they have a second wind, let alone a third, or
832
00:43:26.159 --> 00:43:27.960
a fourth or a fifth. Like this is something you've
833
00:43:27.960 --> 00:43:31.840
ever gon a tryat the lawn or done an endurance anything.
834
00:43:32.400 --> 00:43:35.840
You discover it's not just a second wind, there's a third,
835
00:43:35.880 --> 00:43:38.840
there's a fourth. But most people never push themselves far
836
00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:43.280
enough up that challenge skills, balanced ladder, using flow, distratch
837
00:43:43.679 --> 00:43:49.000
to discover what they're capable of. And what's interesting here.
838
00:43:49.079 --> 00:43:54.599
I always say this about people. Our capabilities, our ceiling
839
00:43:55.159 --> 00:43:58.159
is invisible, and it's invisible to ourselves. We can never know.
840
00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:02.280
And the reason is our capabilities are emergent. They literally
841
00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:05.280
are what emerge and flow at this superior level. And
842
00:44:05.360 --> 00:44:09.440
we're always surprised. We're always like, WHOA, that's I can't
843
00:44:09.519 --> 00:44:12.800
believe like what that level of is right, and so
844
00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:16.360
it's this ladder of like superpowers that we suddenly step
845
00:44:16.440 --> 00:44:20.239
into and again and it's literally an emergent property. We
846
00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:24.000
can't it's invisible before it arises. So that's I think,
847
00:44:24.440 --> 00:44:26.159
and all of this is quite the answer to how
848
00:44:26.199 --> 00:44:28.119
do we override the living beliefs? Which is one of
849
00:44:28.159 --> 00:44:30.199
the things I want to point out that, like you
850
00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:32.840
have the lemiting beliefs because the system that lets you
851
00:44:32.920 --> 00:44:35.760
see what you're actually capable of it's invisible. You can
852
00:44:35.920 --> 00:44:39.320
only go sort of so far at once. You can
853
00:44:39.400 --> 00:44:41.239
only go basically the edge of your belief to that
854
00:44:41.440 --> 00:44:45.480
Banister effect right wherever that is, and you can't you
855
00:44:45.599 --> 00:44:49.559
can't go any farther. You know, I don't said it earlier,
856
00:44:49.719 --> 00:44:52.360
and you'll say it again, maybe in a slightly different way.
857
00:44:52.920 --> 00:44:55.559
But when people come to train with the Flow Research Collective,
858
00:44:55.639 --> 00:44:57.719
for example, what's a goal? What's a win?
859
00:44:58.000 --> 00:44:58.119
Right?
860
00:44:58.239 --> 00:45:00.199
How do I know I've done my job? Am I
861
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:02.360
trying to do? I'm going to have to define a
862
00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:04.840
couple of terms here for this makes sense, but it'll
863
00:45:04.920 --> 00:45:07.000
land for everybody, hopefully, I want to make because we
864
00:45:07.079 --> 00:45:09.559
have a daily to do list in flow science, we
865
00:45:09.679 --> 00:45:12.360
call that a clear goals list. Clear goals are a
866
00:45:12.440 --> 00:45:14.920
flow trigger because they tell your brain what to focus on,
867
00:45:15.280 --> 00:45:17.360
to do it on. It's a well established, well set up.
868
00:45:17.360 --> 00:45:20.440
You build it in a very specific way. But when
869
00:45:20.559 --> 00:45:24.119
I can make the execution of a clear goals list, autotellic.
870
00:45:24.159 --> 00:45:27.519
Autotellic is a fancy Greek word. It describes flow. It
871
00:45:27.639 --> 00:45:29.880
means an end in itself. It means the experience is
872
00:45:30.239 --> 00:45:35.800
so joyous, so fun, so immersively entertainingly astounding, that we
873
00:45:35.920 --> 00:45:37.760
want more and more of it. So when I can
874
00:45:37.880 --> 00:45:41.079
make your daily to do list, I tend things on
875
00:45:41.199 --> 00:45:43.320
my list, and I've gotten to flow along the way,
876
00:45:43.599 --> 00:45:45.639
and I'm so fired up to do it again tomorrow
877
00:45:45.800 --> 00:45:48.239
and do it again tomorrow. What starts to happen is
878
00:45:48.320 --> 00:45:52.119
you accomplish end things every day, again and again and again,
879
00:45:52.320 --> 00:45:55.639
and it doesn't really matter how you feel. Like oftentimes
880
00:45:55.719 --> 00:45:58.800
I say with all artists learn this. I think everybody
881
00:45:58.880 --> 00:46:00.920
learns this. Like the great think about flow is I
882
00:46:01.079 --> 00:46:04.239
can like I'll wake up. It's not always great up here.
883
00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:06.400
Sometimes I wake up and the voice in my head
884
00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:09.639
is gnarly, insane, horrible things, And more often than not
885
00:46:09.920 --> 00:46:12.320
in all honesty, but I get into flow in my
886
00:46:12.519 --> 00:46:16.679
morning writing session. It's just that voice up. It destroys
887
00:46:16.760 --> 00:46:18.440
those lariting beliefs and I can go out and have
888
00:46:18.599 --> 00:46:22.920
a great day. And that's more common than not in
889
00:46:23.079 --> 00:46:25.159
my life. And I think that a lot of people want,
890
00:46:25.760 --> 00:46:28.480
are you know we talked or our harshest critic and
891
00:46:28.559 --> 00:46:31.679
how we talk to ourselves is seriously also loved what
892
00:46:31.800 --> 00:46:33.719
you had to say. I think we have to take
893
00:46:33.760 --> 00:46:36.079
responsibility for our own lives. I think one of the
894
00:46:36.239 --> 00:46:40.840
like areas just most powerful realizations is our life is
895
00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:43.039
going to be nothing more or less than what we
896
00:46:43.199 --> 00:46:46.199
make of it. And I also, I've said this a lot,
897
00:46:46.880 --> 00:46:49.559
is and I think this is related to the belief question.
898
00:46:49.679 --> 00:46:51.440
So we're talking about how to overcome living beliefs. I
899
00:46:51.480 --> 00:46:52.760
talked a lot about flow and other things, and I
900
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:54.480
want to go in a couple of the directions. This
901
00:46:54.639 --> 00:46:56.039
is something I'd like to point out.
902
00:46:56.639 --> 00:46:57.960
And I think it's.
903
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:02.119
Certain spiritual traditions about this. In others it's sort of
904
00:47:02.239 --> 00:47:04.760
like they don't like it's glossed over. But I believe
905
00:47:04.920 --> 00:47:09.119
that taking that the act of getting the life we want,
906
00:47:09.480 --> 00:47:12.480
rising into our potential, is a violent app We are
907
00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:14.800
taking it in a sense from the universe. I don't
908
00:47:14.800 --> 00:47:17.559
mean we have to be mean or harsh or any
909
00:47:17.719 --> 00:47:20.480
unkind or any of those things, but there's a there's
910
00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:24.000
an aggression to it that's required, and there's it's the
911
00:47:24.039 --> 00:47:27.960
same aggression that's required to override those limiting beliefs. I
912
00:47:27.960 --> 00:47:29.679
don't know if that's been your experience.
913
00:47:30.159 --> 00:47:34.760
No, absolutely so, as audience is listening to this, and
914
00:47:35.679 --> 00:47:38.639
you know, even sometimes there's all kinds of different audiences.
915
00:47:38.679 --> 00:47:41.320
We have a pretty broad audience, and many are interested
916
00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:44.280
in mindfleans and meditation. We have a whole lot of
917
00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:47.519
folks inc in psychoic consistence, psychotherapy. We have a lot
918
00:47:47.559 --> 00:47:49.519
of people incted and resilience, a lot of people in
919
00:47:49.800 --> 00:47:53.480
in just optimizing their lives. Some for some the idea
920
00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:57.960
of even the focus on performance and success brings up,
921
00:47:58.719 --> 00:48:00.519
you know, in NOO sens of a cheap they have
922
00:48:00.639 --> 00:48:03.840
to do with comparing invaluation and all this kind of stuff.
923
00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:06.360
And for me, I think that's kind of a subtle
924
00:48:06.440 --> 00:48:08.760
and maybe not so subtle form of a victim mindset
925
00:48:08.880 --> 00:48:11.960
and not wanting to step into one's life. You know,
926
00:48:12.039 --> 00:48:14.559
I just thought of conditioned fears around self shaming and
927
00:48:14.639 --> 00:48:17.440
so forth. And so if someone I think, to them
928
00:48:17.679 --> 00:48:20.800
even embrace whatever level in life to them, just embrace
929
00:48:20.840 --> 00:48:25.199
the idea of personal mastery or becoming a high performer,
930
00:48:25.760 --> 00:48:28.639
or just wanting to really optimize any area of your life,
931
00:48:28.800 --> 00:48:31.000
Like just any there in my life, I'm going to really,
932
00:48:31.239 --> 00:48:33.480
you know, try to be you know, the best parent
933
00:48:33.519 --> 00:48:36.280
I can absolutely be, or the best spouse, or I'm
934
00:48:36.320 --> 00:48:38.559
going to really try to master something in this area
935
00:48:38.599 --> 00:48:41.239
of my life. It takes a certain act of courage.
936
00:48:41.800 --> 00:48:43.559
But then you know, there's a lot of payoffs for
937
00:48:43.639 --> 00:48:45.960
that we've been kind of talking about. Once you step in,
938
00:48:46.360 --> 00:48:49.320
once you start taking those acts of courage, there's all
939
00:48:49.480 --> 00:48:52.519
kinds of reinforcing benefits that can support you and guide
940
00:48:52.559 --> 00:48:55.320
you on your path. And maybe there's even some internal
941
00:48:55.480 --> 00:48:58.840
innate dynamics of our being that we're tapping into that
942
00:48:58.880 --> 00:49:01.440
it'll you know, can care forward. But people have to
943
00:49:01.519 --> 00:49:05.239
make that first step. So what do you suggest in
944
00:49:05.360 --> 00:49:09.199
terms of how people can begin to tap into this
945
00:49:09.480 --> 00:49:11.679
notion of optimizing performance.
946
00:49:11.760 --> 00:49:15.280
So, Flow, that's a really great question, Thanks for asking it.
947
00:49:15.719 --> 00:49:19.119
The question of where to start now two answers depending
948
00:49:19.159 --> 00:49:22.840
on who I'm talking you. So one, if you're burned out, right,
949
00:49:23.159 --> 00:49:27.039
if you're starting subpar. To get to normal, you need
950
00:49:27.119 --> 00:49:29.599
seven eight. Flow is a high energy state, right, so
951
00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:31.920
you need seven eight hours of sleep a night to
952
00:49:32.360 --> 00:49:35.440
regularly access that. You need hydration, lots of water. You
953
00:49:35.519 --> 00:49:39.039
need high quality nutrition through your energy. And you need
954
00:49:39.119 --> 00:49:42.000
to regularly manage your nervousness. Because we talked about that
955
00:49:42.079 --> 00:49:45.079
challenge skills balance too much anxiety, and we live in
956
00:49:45.159 --> 00:49:48.599
this world we're all hyper anxious. You get blocked from flow.
957
00:49:49.039 --> 00:49:52.440
So I always tell people, I literally when I work
958
00:49:52.480 --> 00:49:55.920
with people, I got a checklist. You got five minutes
959
00:49:56.360 --> 00:49:58.360
give me a daily gratitude practice because of all a
960
00:49:58.440 --> 00:50:01.719
lower anxiety. You've got six minutes. Read a novel.
961
00:50:02.119 --> 00:50:02.800
Read fiction.
962
00:50:03.119 --> 00:50:06.119
Actually, it lowers stress levels a little more than a
963
00:50:06.159 --> 00:50:10.280
gragic breakcage. You've got seven to eleven mindfulness, right, seven
964
00:50:10.320 --> 00:50:13.000
to fifteen breathwork, mindfulness. You've got fifteen to twenty and
965
00:50:13.079 --> 00:50:15.559
go for a walk in nature. You've got twenty to forty.
966
00:50:15.679 --> 00:50:21.280
It's exercise. You're super stressed due to two of those things, right, epsence, salt, bass,
967
00:50:21.679 --> 00:50:26.559
restorative yoga, infrared, sauna, get a massage. Like the list
968
00:50:26.679 --> 00:50:29.519
is sort of endless, but like we got to manicure
969
00:50:29.559 --> 00:50:33.360
our nervous systems right the front end of this stuff
970
00:50:33.920 --> 00:50:36.880
in terms of making this stuff reliable and repeatable, and
971
00:50:37.159 --> 00:50:39.519
you know, getting in their lives and start there right
972
00:50:40.159 --> 00:50:42.280
and then do what I'm about to tell everybody else
973
00:50:42.320 --> 00:50:45.000
to do. If you're fired off your motivated, ever, I
974
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:48.000
always say, like, if you have the time, we have
975
00:50:48.239 --> 00:50:51.000
what are known as what was saying this call primary
976
00:50:51.119 --> 00:50:54.559
flow experiences. This is literally the thing that you've done
977
00:50:54.599 --> 00:50:57.119
most of your life that drops you into flow. For me,
978
00:50:57.280 --> 00:50:59.719
I can tell you it's skiing. For my wife, that's
979
00:51:00.079 --> 00:51:02.719
dogs in the back country. For my best friend, it's
980
00:51:02.760 --> 00:51:06.239
playing the guitar, you know. For my other best friend,
981
00:51:06.280 --> 00:51:12.280
it's coding computers, architecture, salcid dancing, ballroom dancing, horse back riding,
982
00:51:12.960 --> 00:51:16.920
gus macro mac gardening. You know, it doesn't really matter.
983
00:51:17.480 --> 00:51:20.320
And if you don't know what your primary flow activity is,
984
00:51:21.039 --> 00:51:23.800
think about your favorite memories that are not pegged at
985
00:51:23.880 --> 00:51:26.519
dates and don't even like ask yourself what you were doing,
986
00:51:26.559 --> 00:51:29.079
but look for the qualities. Was I indoors? Was I outdoors?
987
00:51:29.239 --> 00:51:31.960
Was I alone? Was I with a group? Was there
988
00:51:32.119 --> 00:51:32.800
motion a while?
989
00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:35.639
Was it an embodied practice? Was it a collegnible ask
990
00:51:35.719 --> 00:51:38.840
yourself those questions, look for commonalities, and like find an
991
00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:42.039
activity like that. It's very close to your primary flyoutavity
992
00:51:42.079 --> 00:51:46.159
with that one, and just spend if you can four
993
00:51:46.239 --> 00:51:49.599
hours a week and afternoon a week doing that. Is
994
00:51:50.039 --> 00:51:52.920
that our primary flow activity are sort of from a
995
00:51:53.000 --> 00:51:56.760
nature nurture perspective, lined up with our The flow triggers
996
00:51:56.760 --> 00:51:59.960
were usually most susceptible to and often work best for us.
997
00:52:00.559 --> 00:52:03.400
So low as you pointed out earlier, if you talked
998
00:52:03.400 --> 00:52:05.079
to around the Z and come out and say it,
999
00:52:05.119 --> 00:52:07.239
but you brought the point up like four different ways.
1000
00:52:07.719 --> 00:52:09.239
The more flow you get, the more flow you get.
1001
00:52:09.239 --> 00:52:11.159
It's like any skills like meditation, right, you want to
1002
00:52:11.159 --> 00:52:14.119
get good at meditating and producing that grand state. Meditate
1003
00:52:14.199 --> 00:52:15.800
a lot. You're training the brain to focus in a
1004
00:52:15.920 --> 00:52:18.679
very particular way. Blow we talked about right at the
1005
00:52:18.679 --> 00:52:21.880
front of our discussion lightly different than meditation. We know
1006
00:52:22.039 --> 00:52:24.880
that Michael Posner, the dean of intention Science in the
1007
00:52:25.159 --> 00:52:28.760
seventies or eighties, said, Hey, it's very clear that a
1008
00:52:28.840 --> 00:52:31.039
regular meditation practice is going to make you more flow
1009
00:52:31.119 --> 00:52:34.519
prone because they're focusing skills and they're related. There's same
1010
00:52:34.599 --> 00:52:36.199
thing with more flow you get, the more flow you get.
1011
00:52:36.239 --> 00:52:39.480
So I get a lot of flow on Saturday skiing right,
1012
00:52:39.559 --> 00:52:41.360
I got a better chance of getting into flow at
1013
00:52:41.519 --> 00:52:44.239
work on Monday and Tuesday. That's the first part. The
1014
00:52:44.280 --> 00:52:47.320
second part is when we move into flow, there's a
1015
00:52:47.440 --> 00:52:50.159
global release in nitrioxide. It pushes stressful ones out of
1016
00:52:50.159 --> 00:52:52.679
our system so that feel good neurochemical pals can take
1017
00:52:52.719 --> 00:52:56.400
their place. It resets that nervous system, so it calms
1018
00:52:56.639 --> 00:53:00.480
us down, which also helps us get an to flow
1019
00:53:00.800 --> 00:53:04.719
and finally the heightened creativity and possibly the heightened productivity
1020
00:53:05.199 --> 00:53:07.360
and the heightened mood. This is work that came out
1021
00:53:07.400 --> 00:53:09.800
of Harvard to some models found that it will outlast
1022
00:53:09.800 --> 00:53:12.440
the flow state by a day maybe two. So like
1023
00:53:12.559 --> 00:53:15.119
you get this afterglow off fact that you know, and
1024
00:53:15.239 --> 00:53:18.079
I think that's the neuroplastic window we were talking about.
1025
00:53:18.079 --> 00:53:21.960
I think that afterglow correlates with that neuroplastic window when
1026
00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:24.679
you can kind of rewire some of those limiting beliefs.
1027
00:53:24.719 --> 00:53:29.039
So if you're burned out, start by taking care of yourself, sleep,
1028
00:53:29.320 --> 00:53:33.079
manicure your nervous system. If you can't get there, you know,
1029
00:53:33.320 --> 00:53:36.199
take avgation. If that doesn't work psychedelic therapy, you know
1030
00:53:36.239 --> 00:53:38.760
what I mean, Like, there's a list depending on how
1031
00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:41.719
far where you're starting from, and then double down on
1032
00:53:41.760 --> 00:53:44.199
your primary SLALO activity. If you're starting from I'm all
1033
00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:48.119
fired up. Start doubling down your primary slo activity. If
1034
00:53:48.159 --> 00:53:50.480
you want to take it one step further, if you
1035
00:53:50.519 --> 00:53:52.880
can controw your schedule, or if you This is how
1036
00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:54.519
what I work with companies. This is one of the
1037
00:53:54.599 --> 00:53:58.199
things that we do create high flow organizations, not even companies,
1038
00:53:58.239 --> 00:54:00.920
just organizations. Because we've done this with the efforts to
1039
00:54:00.960 --> 00:54:02.719
the police department in the airport, like a lot of
1040
00:54:02.760 --> 00:54:07.119
other eatings, where we all have activities that will produce microflow.
1041
00:54:07.320 --> 00:54:10.280
I know when I write or make a PowerPoint presentation
1042
00:54:10.440 --> 00:54:13.599
or give a speech for example, guaranteed microflow for me.
1043
00:54:14.239 --> 00:54:17.599
I know that when I have to do accounting or
1044
00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:21.199
talk to my lawyers or like do you know hardcore
1045
00:54:21.360 --> 00:54:25.320
COO tax, Yes, it's anti flow for me. I'm now
1046
00:54:25.519 --> 00:54:29.440
not inflow. So what we try to do is outsource
1047
00:54:30.239 --> 00:54:35.000
things that are anti flow and maximize opportunities for microflow.
1048
00:54:35.400 --> 00:54:38.280
How do you increase employee retention right neat problem in
1049
00:54:38.360 --> 00:54:42.719
the workforce today? For example, amplify opportunities for microflow in
1050
00:54:42.840 --> 00:54:45.599
employees don't. You can't hire for flow, but you can
1051
00:54:45.679 --> 00:54:48.960
sum the assigned ask in groups and teams based on
1052
00:54:49.400 --> 00:54:51.280
what do you get absorbed in. And we actually will
1053
00:54:51.280 --> 00:54:53.480
take it one further. We have found that if you
1054
00:54:53.559 --> 00:54:56.440
have an employees excellent at something but it doesn't produce
1055
00:54:56.519 --> 00:54:59.159
microflow for them, versus somebody who's less excellent but it
1056
00:54:59.199 --> 00:55:02.920
produces microf you're better off as an organization braining up
1057
00:55:03.000 --> 00:55:07.639
the less skilled person because this activity is self fulfilling
1058
00:55:07.679 --> 00:55:09.599
and it it's a feedback loop. The other person is
1059
00:55:09.719 --> 00:55:11.079
just going to get burned out and they're going to
1060
00:55:11.360 --> 00:55:16.119
lead your organization. So long answer, very practical. I hope
1061
00:55:16.159 --> 00:55:16.719
it was helpful.
1062
00:55:17.119 --> 00:55:21.199
No, absolutely, And so you know, begin with taking good
1063
00:55:21.239 --> 00:55:23.480
care of ourselves, you know, good self care and all
1064
00:55:23.519 --> 00:55:26.800
the different ways you talked about, and then outsourcing those
1065
00:55:26.840 --> 00:55:28.559
things that take us out a flow as much as
1066
00:55:28.599 --> 00:55:31.360
we can, you know, setting ourselves up for success to
1067
00:55:31.519 --> 00:55:35.480
enhance these microflow experiences. That all makes tremendous sense.
1068
00:55:35.519 --> 00:55:37.679
And I think I have to say this by the way,
1069
00:55:37.920 --> 00:55:41.199
because this is often people they want sexy wiz bang,
1070
00:55:41.239 --> 00:55:42.639
you know how the world is. They want to need
1071
00:55:42.760 --> 00:55:46.119
technology or a pill or whatever. Like I always say,
1072
00:55:46.159 --> 00:55:48.639
the stuff with flow is like, it's not very sexy.
1073
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:52.079
Nothing I teach from a practical level is going to
1074
00:55:52.159 --> 00:55:54.960
win you popularity contest is like the coolest thing in
1075
00:55:55.000 --> 00:55:58.559
the world. It's just very sort of fundamental, practical, and
1076
00:55:58.679 --> 00:56:01.920
it works incredibly. It works better than those other sexier things.
1077
00:56:02.159 --> 00:56:04.639
So within all that, maybe it we'll wrap up our
1078
00:56:04.679 --> 00:56:07.760
conversation here, what is not to make these a thing?
1079
00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:10.239
Like everything you just talked about, I think is really
1080
00:56:10.320 --> 00:56:12.840
in some ways the pathway and the on ramp for
1081
00:56:12.880 --> 00:56:16.880
all of us. Is there an importance to cultivating peak
1082
00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:22.039
experiences of flow, macro flow experiences, and also maybe just
1083
00:56:22.119 --> 00:56:24.400
as a rabbit hole? Second part to that question for me,
1084
00:56:24.599 --> 00:56:28.119
you talked about some works done comparing flow states with
1085
00:56:28.280 --> 00:56:33.079
psychedelic states and there being some differences. So in some
1086
00:56:33.199 --> 00:56:35.679
ways are they really different? Are these two different versions
1087
00:56:35.719 --> 00:56:39.599
of flow? And that could also talk about other profound stale.
1088
00:56:39.719 --> 00:56:43.000
Yes, okay, so that's really cool questions. Let me take
1089
00:56:43.039 --> 00:56:46.320
the second one first, the difference in similarities. So we
1090
00:56:46.519 --> 00:56:47.920
have been doing a lot of work and I've got
1091
00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:49.519
a We've got a paper coming out in a couple
1092
00:56:49.559 --> 00:56:52.639
of weeks in the Neuroconsciousness, the Journal of the Neuroscience
1093
00:56:52.679 --> 00:56:57.159
of Consciousness on the relationship between flow and intuition, and
1094
00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:00.920
this is it's not quite psychedelics, but you'll like how
1095
00:57:01.000 --> 00:57:05.239
we phrased it. There's this belief that flow is intuition
1096
00:57:05.719 --> 00:57:13.239
in action, and intuition is cognission and flow so very related. Now,
1097
00:57:13.599 --> 00:57:18.159
our psychedelic experience is similar to flow experiences. I think
1098
00:57:18.199 --> 00:57:23.840
you can have flow experiences inside of psychedelic experiences. One
1099
00:57:24.320 --> 00:57:27.199
like I think that it's certain psychedelics more than others,
1100
00:57:27.639 --> 00:57:32.119
but there are differences. Most of the major psychedelics are
1101
00:57:33.119 --> 00:57:38.400
heavy serotonin agonist serotoninis shows up and flow, but it's
1102
00:57:38.400 --> 00:57:40.400
at the tail end of a flow state, after a
1103
00:57:40.480 --> 00:57:43.320
flow state that calm and rest and relaxed Nie in
1104
00:57:43.360 --> 00:57:48.079
the world. That's serotonin. But serotonin and dopamine work in
1105
00:57:48.320 --> 00:57:51.079
opposition to one another, like a lot of neuroalchemicals. You
1106
00:57:51.159 --> 00:57:53.880
know this, They work in opposition. So as serotonin goes up,
1107
00:57:53.920 --> 00:57:56.719
dub mean goes down, and vice versa. So a lot
1108
00:57:56.760 --> 00:58:00.880
of psychedelics are very serotonin heavy. The other neural chemicals
1109
00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:03.320
that show up in psychedelic experiences they all map, they're
1110
00:58:03.320 --> 00:58:07.400
all the same neual chemicals, but sterotonin is turned really
1111
00:58:07.679 --> 00:58:11.639
up in psychedelic experiences, and it seems like dopamine endorphins
1112
00:58:11.639 --> 00:58:14.679
are crank in anantamaut of cranks really up in a
1113
00:58:14.840 --> 00:58:19.079
flow experience. Answer to the question about like, I can
1114
00:58:19.119 --> 00:58:21.320
answer it a network level, Like we know you're in
1115
00:58:21.400 --> 00:58:24.119
flow when your goal directing network and your executive attention
1116
00:58:24.199 --> 00:58:26.320
network are DAVE and you just watched the default mode
1117
00:58:26.400 --> 00:58:30.559
network are turned off, right, So do those conditions exist
1118
00:58:30.639 --> 00:58:34.320
in some side of some psychedelic states? Probably, Like there
1119
00:58:34.360 --> 00:58:36.400
are moments you can be on LSD where you're having
1120
00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:40.320
a goal directed thing interlude, and but there are moments
1121
00:58:40.360 --> 00:58:43.079
where like you're you know, in seventeen different parts of
1122
00:58:43.119 --> 00:58:45.920
the universe that wants that there's nothing goal directed going on.
1123
00:58:46.440 --> 00:58:50.000
I would say that's very unflowing, right, not a bad experience,
1124
00:58:50.079 --> 00:58:53.159
but not a flow experience. Just like but if you
1125
00:58:53.199 --> 00:58:56.159
were going from the psychological definition to flow, these six
1126
00:58:56.320 --> 00:58:58.880
characteristics make up the state, you might say they're prevalent
1127
00:58:58.880 --> 00:59:02.960
in both. Look at things neuro biologically and I see differences.
1128
00:59:03.800 --> 00:59:06.760
Are they you know, are they in type or IMPI?
1129
00:59:07.000 --> 00:59:07.480
I don't know.
1130
00:59:07.880 --> 00:59:12.320
It's a great phenomenal question, and like future research needed
1131
00:59:12.440 --> 00:59:13.280
here for sure.
1132
00:59:13.760 --> 00:59:17.119
Absolutely. So one last reflection, I'm really trying it. If
1133
00:59:17.119 --> 00:59:19.639
we're talking about really we're talking here about rewiring your beliefs,
1134
00:59:19.719 --> 00:59:22.840
so really building on the possibilities of optimizing our brain,
1135
00:59:22.920 --> 00:59:27.079
optimizing our neural networks to optimize our lives. So Dan
1136
00:59:27.159 --> 00:59:30.440
Siegel talks about kind of an optimized brain, that the
1137
00:59:30.519 --> 00:59:32.800
neural networks of the brain are becoming more complex to
1138
00:59:32.880 --> 00:59:36.800
solve more complex problems, but they're communicating very efficiently with
1139
00:59:36.920 --> 00:59:40.280
each other. So it's becoming differentiated but well integrated. And
1140
00:59:40.400 --> 00:59:43.880
a differentiated, well integrated brain is a brain that's in
1141
00:59:44.039 --> 00:59:47.400
flow between neither virginity and chaos. There's this river that
1142
00:59:47.519 --> 00:59:51.039
he calls flow of an optimal brain experience. Robin Carhart
1143
00:59:51.079 --> 00:59:53.960
Harrison his theories and trying to explain what's going on
1144
00:59:54.079 --> 00:59:58.400
with psycholics and psychoical SISTE therapy, as is entropic brain
1145
00:59:58.519 --> 01:00:01.559
theory where all this is he posits a kind of
1146
01:00:01.639 --> 01:00:05.920
Goldilock zone that's somewhere between rigidity and chaos, and so
1147
01:00:07.079 --> 01:00:10.880
is this the brain flow? Maybe one last piece of that.
1148
01:00:11.639 --> 01:00:15.039
John Burbanki talks about flow in terms of this concentrated
1149
01:00:15.599 --> 01:00:17.239
you know that one of the things that brain's doing
1150
01:00:17.400 --> 01:00:21.320
is constantly making mean from data, making new connections within data.
1151
01:00:21.639 --> 01:00:25.239
So there's this kind of rapid fire connecting and insights.
1152
01:00:25.440 --> 01:00:28.760
We're connecting things in new ways and this is happening
1153
01:00:28.880 --> 01:00:31.519
kind of rapid fire and in a concentrated way, and
1154
01:00:31.559 --> 01:00:34.079
thus we're experiencing this kind of elevated state of flow.
1155
01:00:34.360 --> 01:00:36.639
So it all seems to be with like somehow the
1156
01:00:36.719 --> 01:00:40.800
brain is in this optimal space to be Yeah, you're
1157
01:00:40.880 --> 01:00:44.079
actually all those phenomena are roughly the same phenomena, right,
1158
01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:47.159
If I were to put it in Layman's terms, when
1159
01:00:47.199 --> 01:00:49.559
we're in flow, we're taking in more information for a second,
1160
01:00:49.719 --> 01:00:52.039
processing it more completely and more quickly.
1161
01:00:52.280 --> 01:00:55.119
To put it in terms of we worked with Robin
1162
01:00:55.159 --> 01:00:57.320
and his lab folks in his lab and he's now
1163
01:00:57.559 --> 01:00:59.559
moved his lab to out of uz Ali's lab who's
1164
01:00:59.599 --> 01:01:03.280
on our and I've worked with him to he talks about, well,
1165
01:01:03.400 --> 01:01:05.400
we know we've worked on a lot of people worked
1166
01:01:05.400 --> 01:01:09.159
on in psagedelic states in flow states. Don't know if
1167
01:01:09.199 --> 01:01:13.039
this or this is probably not through in all meditative states,
1168
01:01:13.360 --> 01:01:16.159
and not all meditative states are flowing, and the difference
1169
01:01:16.239 --> 01:01:18.760
is actually dopeing a lot of meditative states don't produce
1170
01:01:18.800 --> 01:01:23.000
any dopamine. If you're doing a cabalistic visualization, excited dye
1171
01:01:23.119 --> 01:01:26.400
meditation or whatever, you're transmorgifying letters and numbers, or you're
1172
01:01:26.400 --> 01:01:29.760
doing some of the bedding Buddhists of the White Lineage
1173
01:01:29.800 --> 01:01:32.800
stuff where there's some certain things they do in Zen
1174
01:01:32.800 --> 01:01:36.199
Buddhism that does this too. It will produce dopamine and
1175
01:01:36.320 --> 01:01:40.559
thus can produce flow. So meditation doesn't always produce flow.
1176
01:01:40.559 --> 01:01:41.199
Everyone does that.
1177
01:01:41.280 --> 01:01:41.559
It does.
1178
01:01:41.800 --> 01:01:43.960
That was tangentially related to what I was saying. But
1179
01:01:44.119 --> 01:01:47.119
we talk about the edge of criticality, blow and psychedelic states.
1180
01:01:47.159 --> 01:01:49.719
The brain is best when it's poised on the edge
1181
01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:53.159
of criticality. Chaos is the next step over. It's right
1182
01:01:53.239 --> 01:01:55.480
at the edge of chaos, but it's not. It means
1183
01:01:55.880 --> 01:01:58.760
there are It means the patterns are repeating, but they're
1184
01:01:58.880 --> 01:02:02.920
not locking. Right, they're oscillating and they're present, but you're
1185
01:02:03.000 --> 01:02:06.159
not locking it on one state that's the intocriticality is
1186
01:02:06.360 --> 01:02:09.880
maximum flexibility. So we know that sort of like answer
1187
01:02:09.960 --> 01:02:13.559
your question, resilience and all the adaptive flexibility, and the
1188
01:02:13.599 --> 01:02:17.360
antecriticality is the brain at like maximum adaptive flexibility. So
1189
01:02:17.480 --> 01:02:20.840
the brain in flow on the edge of criticality is
1190
01:02:21.079 --> 01:02:25.159
like that's your maximum maximum or you know, I'm saying
1191
01:02:25.199 --> 01:02:28.599
this authoritatively as we've discovered so far, right.
1192
01:02:29.599 --> 01:02:33.480
Well, extraordinary I mean fascinating and illuminating and just overall
1193
01:02:33.519 --> 01:02:37.079
I think inspiring and encouraging and empowering that we you know,
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01:02:37.199 --> 01:02:39.800
this human journey is quite so much we don't know,
1195
01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:42.360
but we know a lot more. But the possibilities seem
1196
01:02:42.440 --> 01:02:45.400
to be pretty limitless. And having the courage to step
1197
01:02:45.480 --> 01:02:48.199
into you know, taking good care of ourselves but also
1198
01:02:48.800 --> 01:02:52.039
bringing ourselves to the edge of our performance can really
1199
01:02:52.559 --> 01:02:56.079
produce extraordinary life and a meaningful life in so many ways.
1200
01:02:56.440 --> 01:03:00.239
I agree completely, that's definitely. You know, our standard flow
1201
01:03:00.320 --> 01:03:03.320
training was just seventy to eighty percent increase in flow.
1202
01:03:03.800 --> 01:03:07.360
It's reliable, it's repeatable, it's trainable. So and this is
1203
01:03:07.440 --> 01:03:10.119
what's in all of us. So you got to ask
1204
01:03:10.159 --> 01:03:11.880
yourself when you think about these questions, what am I
1205
01:03:11.960 --> 01:03:14.159
capable of? Well, what would I do if I could
1206
01:03:14.159 --> 01:03:16.199
be like five hundred percent more productive? We're you know,
1207
01:03:16.320 --> 01:03:19.000
three hundred percent more creative or cut learning times. Now,
1208
01:03:19.519 --> 01:03:21.760
this is literally what you know the science of flow
1209
01:03:21.800 --> 01:03:23.800
makes available to each and every one of us. But
1210
01:03:23.880 --> 01:03:25.239
I think to your point, what we do with that
1211
01:03:25.360 --> 01:03:26.440
information is.
1212
01:03:26.639 --> 01:03:29.719
Entirely up to you. You know, yeah, absolutely, and you
1213
01:03:29.800 --> 01:03:31.360
know we all have different goals in life. And I
1214
01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:33.800
love that you actually said we all experienced a lot flow,
1215
01:03:33.840 --> 01:03:35.880
a lot more than maybe we think we do. And
1216
01:03:36.039 --> 01:03:37.840
you know, a one of the questions. Sometimes you hear
1217
01:03:38.280 --> 01:03:40.559
people talk about or trying to help people identify what
1218
01:03:40.639 --> 01:03:43.880
their superpower is, and their superarer could be anything. It
1219
01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:46.519
could be like doing the laundry, it could be cutting
1220
01:03:46.599 --> 01:03:49.000
the grass. We all have things that were really good
1221
01:03:49.079 --> 01:03:51.679
at that we feel really confident about what we enjoy doing,
1222
01:03:52.039 --> 01:03:53.639
and they're going to take us into some kind of
1223
01:03:53.679 --> 01:03:58.079
flow and that's really accessible to all of us completely. Okay, wonderful, Well,
1224
01:03:58.119 --> 01:04:00.920
thank you on Stephen Cotler, and I just really appreciate
1225
01:04:01.000 --> 01:04:03.400
you giving us your our audience, your time today and
1226
01:04:03.519 --> 01:04:06.320
sharing all your insight and ongoing research with us.
1227
01:04:06.800 --> 01:04:08.199
Thank you, See, this is my pleasure.
1228
01:04:08.519 --> 01:04:11.360
You will thank you for joining me on the Radical
1229
01:04:11.400 --> 01:04:15.400
Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to
1230
01:04:15.480 --> 01:04:18.679
our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open
1231
01:04:18.760 --> 01:04:22.320
to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage
1232
01:04:22.320 --> 01:04:24.639
you to subscribe and help us spread the message of
1233
01:04:24.719 --> 01:04:28.719
healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present, and stay
1234
01:04:28.840 --> 01:04:30.079
true to you. Take care