The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer

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This is also why we started our exploration of drive with curiosity, passion, and purpose. This trio establishes interest and enjoyment—via curiosity and passion—and then cements core beliefs and values via purpose. In other words, this trio of drivers came first in this book because they’re the foundation required to maximize autonomy. Now that you’ve identified the spots where curiosities overlap, play in those intersections for a little while. Devote twenty to thirty minutes a day to listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading articles, books, whatever, on any aspect of that overlap. If you’re interested in supply-chain management in the health care industry and you’re also curious about artificial intelligence, then it’s time to explore the advantages and disadvantages that artificial intelligence brings to supply-chain management in the health care industry. The goal is to feed those curiosities a little bit at a time, and feed them on a daily basis. This slow-growth strategy takes advantage of the brain’s inherent learning software.6 When you advance your knowledge a little bit at a time, you’re giving your adaptive unconscious a chance to process that information. In the study of creativity, this process is known as “incubation.”7 What’s actually happening is pattern recognition. Automatically, the brain begins looking for connections between older bits of info you’ve already learned and the newer bits you’re currently learning. Over time, this means more patterns, more dopamine, more motivation, and, eventually, a bit of expertise.8

The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler | Waterstones

Neuroanatomy and networks, meanwhile, are the places those messages are sent from and received, the where in the brain something is taking place.6 Learning. The ingredients of impossible ; Growth mindsets and truth filters ; The ROI on reading ; Five not-to-easy steps for learning almost anything ; The skill of skill ; Stronger ; The 80/20 of emotional intelligence ; The shortest path to superman There are things no one knew were possiblebefore someone accomplished them: capital “I” Impossible feats. Every person also has their ownpersonal “impossibles”:the things that you consider outside the scope of your individual capabilities and possibilities – whether that’s escaping poverty or becoming a professional artist or athlete.The highest and most fulfilling goal you can aspire to in life is to push the boundaries of your personal “impossible.”Some peoplewho persevere in their pursuit of personalimpossibles,long-term, end up pushing the boundaries of what goals humanity deems to be achievable. I’m using the term formula in the same way that computer scientists talk about algorithms, as a sequence of steps that anyone can follow to get consistent results. And while the rest of this book is dedicated to the details of this formula, there are a couple of key questions that are worth answering up front.

I needed to understand why this was happening, how this was happening, and—possibly without the burning school buses—if it could happen for me or you. In other words, I was desperate for the formula. I was also pretty convinced there was a formula. And I felt this way because, even though these feats were mind-bending, this wasn’t the first time my mind had been bent. According to Deci and Ryan, we’re tapping autonomy correctly when we’re doing what we’re doing because of “interest and enjoyment” and because “it aligns with our core beliefs and values.” Put differently, the seeking system likes to be in charge of exactly what kinds of resources it’s seeking.

The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer eBook The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer eBook

If this life not be a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatrics from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we . . . are needed to redeem.

Well structured – You’ll find this to be particularly well organized to support its reception or application. Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.” Book Genre: Business, Health, Leadership, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Productivity, Psychology, Science, Self Help The messages themselves are basic.5 In the brain, electrical signals have only one meaning: do more of what you’re doing.

The Art of Impossible Quotes by Steven Kotler - Goodreads The Art of Impossible Quotes by Steven Kotler - Goodreads

We are capable of so much more than we know-that's the message at the core of The Art of Impossible. Building upon cutting-edge neuroscience and over twenty years of research, bestselling author, peak performance expert and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, Steven Kotler lays out a blueprint for extreme performance improvement. If you want to aim high, here is the playbook to make it happen! Think of evolution as a video game with two main levels. To win on level one, a player must obtain more resources—food, water, shelter, mates, and so on—than the other players in the game. On level two, the player must turn those resources into children and help those children survive, either by having so many that there’s no way predators can eat them all (which is what fish do), or by keeping those children safe and teaching them how to obtain resources for themselves (which is the human method). This, too, is evolution at work. It’s not that evolution ever lets us stop playing the “get more resources” game, it’s that our strategy evolves. Once baseline needs are met, you can devote yourself to ways to get, well, you guessed it, seriously more resources—for yourself, for your family, for your tribe, for your species. As high-minded as something like “meaning and purpose” might seem as a driver, this is actually evolution’s way of saying: Okay, you’ve got enough resources for yourself and your family. Now it’s time to help your tribe or your species get more. This is also why, in the brain, there’s really not much difference between drivers. Intrinsic drivers, extrinsic drivers, it doesn’t matter. In the end, like so much of life, it all comes down to neurochemistry.When multiple curiosity streams intersect, you not only amp up engagement—you create the necessary conditions for pattern recognition, or the linking of new ideas together.2 Pattern recognition is what the brain does at a very basic level. It’s essentially the fundamental job of most neurons. As a result, whenever we recognize a pattern, the brain rewards us with a tiny squirt of dopamine. Start by writing down twenty-five things you’re curious about. And by curious, all I mean is that if you had a spare weekend, you’d be interested in reading a couple of books on the topic, attending a few lectures, and maybe having a conversation or two with an expert. Evolution shaped the brain to enable survival. But evolution itself is driven forward by the availability of resources. Scarcity of resources is always the largest threat to our survival, making it the largest driver of evolution. And there are only two possible responses to this threat. You can fight over dwindling resources, or you can go exploring, get creative, innovative, and cooperative, and make new resources. Curiosity, passion, and purpose are a launching pad toward the impossible. They’re the moves that get your pieces on the board, the place where this game begins. But the impossible is a long game, and if you’re interested in seeing it through to the end, then the boost you’ll get from these three initial drivers isn’t nearly enough to carry you through. Of course, describing flow as an “optimal state of consciousness” doesn’t get us very far. More specifically, the term refers to those moments of rapt attention and total absorption when you get so focused on the task at hand that everything else disappears. Action and awareness merge. Your sense of self vanishes. Time passes strangely. And performance—performance just soars.