Meaning, Happiness, and the Challenge–Skill Balance

Kotler contrasts momentary happiness with long-term meaning and explains the challenge–skill balance that triggers flow.

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Steven Kotler ~ Author of The Art of Impossible

~ High-Performance Entrepreneurship ~

I am going to start this podcast introduction from some passages at the end of a book our guest today has recently written. “What impossible challenges would you tackle if you knew you could be 500% more productive? If you could be 600% more creative? If you could cut your learning times in half?” If you could increase your confidence massively, and also spike the pattern recognition significantly in your brain.

I know it sounds like the drug that everyone has dreamed about for centuries to make people feel limitless, and superhuman. But it is not a drug. It is a biological process that nature has embedded into each and every one of us, and we don’t need to be a professional athlete or naturally talented to access it.

What is it and how does one access it? We are going to talk about that in today's podcast because the author has written a book that dissects how one can reach this state to achieve what humans think is impossible for themselves. The book is called The Art of Impossible. The author and today’s guest is Steven Kotler.

Steven is a NYTimes Bestselling Author of numerous books including The Rise of Superman, Bold, Abundance, and my favorite read of 2018 Stealing Fire. He is the founder of Flow-State Collective and is an expert in the field of peak-performance, and achieving the impossible because he has studied individuals who have done this numerous times. Some of those people are well known top-athletes, SpecialOps members, NavySEALS, and some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and innovators. He himself has also been a guinea pig to his own madness, and practices on a regular basis what he preaches.

This is Steven's second time on the podcast, and we are going to get behind the man that has studied for years the art of achieving the impossible, why he wrote this book, and how we can apply this methodology to achieve the impossible in our own lives.

04:51 Who is Steven Kotler?

05:46 The Art of Impossible

10:32 The Formula of Impossible

14:55 Using Flow States to Achieve the Impossible

23:05 Flow Neuroscience

26:34 The Essentials of Motivation

29:14 Passion Neurochemicals

33:55 Flow States > Orgasms

35:16 Beta State of Mind

42:01 How Risk Taking is Encouraged by Our Brains

43:10 Goal-Setting

53:16 Where the Brain Finds Inspiration