Chemical signals are similarly simple, though they can have one of two meanings: do more of what you’re doing, or do less of what you’re been doing. This book is a tour de force of high performance. It’s an essential resource for those looking to align their curiosity, passion, and purpose to have not just a little more flow and creativity in their lives but to have a lot more flow and creativity. Want to learn how to take your innovation to seemingly impossible heights? Steven Kotler will teach you how.”— Scott Barry Kaufman, author of Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization

The Art of Building the Impossible | The New Yorker The Art of Building the Impossible | The New Yorker

Yet, there’s no secret secret. After decades spent researching this subject and training people to overcome those odds, I’ve repeatedly learned the same lesson: if you devote your life to accomplishing lowercase i impossibles, you can sometimes end up accomplishing a capital I impossible along the way. 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. Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers—athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more—who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams much more attainable for all of us.As discussed, only two strategies are available. Either you fight over dwindling resources, or you get creative and make more resources. Thus, when we talk about drive from an evolutionary perspective, what we’re really talking about are the psychological fuels that energize behaviors that best solve resource scarcity: fight/flee and explore/innovate. There’s a substantial difference between personal improvement and stalking the impossible. The latter can be significantly more dangerous and a lot less fun. As far as I can tell, the only thing more difficult than the emotional toil of pursuing true excellence is the emotional toil of not pursuing true excellence. And, to be clear, this isn’t a book about happy or sad. There are plenty of other books that cover those topics but, for our purposes, happy or sad is just what happens on the way to accomplishing the impossible or not accomplishing the impossible. More meaningful does not typically mean more pleasant. So I took my obsession with this question into other domains. In the arts, sciences, technology, culture, business—pretty much every area imaginable—I went hunting for the formula. What does it take for individuals, organizations, even institutions, to significantly level up their game? What does it take to achieve paradigm-shifting breakthroughs? And, in a phrase, if we can get past the hyperbole and unearth the practicality, what does it take to accomplish the impossible? Does this mean you lose the infinite game if you’re not a paradigm-shifting physicist or a record-breaking ballplayer? No. It means you lose by not trying to play full out, by not trying to do the impossible—whatever that is for you.

The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer

Sure, these athletes were routinely accomplishing the impossible and, absolutely, this demanded an explanation. But, more important: it was these athletes. 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. Thus, the solution: identify your biggest weaknesses and get to work. This is why skier Shane McConkey would consistently seek out the worst conditions on the mountain, why Arnold Schwarzenegger always began his weight lifting sessions targeting his weakest muscle group, and why Nobel laureate Richard Feynman decided, late in his life, to learn how to speak to women. Of course, Feynman decides to train this particular weakness by hanging out at strip clubs—but that’s a different story.42”As humans, we have all been shaped by eons of evolution. As a result, we share the same basic machinery. At the Flow Research Collective, we study the neurobiology of human peak performance. Neurobiology is the structure and function of the nervous system—meaning the parts of the nervous system, including the brain, how those parts work, and how they work together.9 In other words, at the Collective, we study the human nervous system when it’s functioning at its absolute best. Then, we take what we’ve learned and use it to train a wide variety of people, from members of the US special forces to executives at Fortune 100 companies to the general public. Yet, because our trainings are based on neurobiology, they work for everyone.

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

But there’s also a lowercase i impossible. The same rules apply, as this is still the stuff beyond our capabilities and our imagination, just on a different scale. Lowercase i impossibles are those things that we believe are impossible for us. They’re the feats that no one, including ourselves, at least for a while, ever imagined we’d be capable of accomplishing. 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. When the brain wants to motivate us, it sends out a neurochemical message via one of seven specific networks.9 These networks are ancient devices, found in all mammals, that correspond to the behavior they’re designed to produce. There is a system for fear, another for anger/rage, and a third for grief or what’s technically known as “separation distress.” The lust system drives us to procreate; the care/nurture system urges us to protect and educate our young. Yet, when we talk about drive—the psychological energy that pushes us forward—we’re really talking about the two final systems: play/social engagement and seeking/desire. 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.” It’s FLOW — the biological formula for the impossible. Flow is defined as “an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform the best.”

Dopamine is the brain’s primary reward chemical, with oxytocin a close second.11 Yet serotonin, endorphins, norepinephrine, and anandamide also play a role. The pleasurable feeling created by each of these chemicals drives us to act and, if that action was successful, reinforces the behavior in memory. Most important to our quest is where this process leads. Knowing the history of a subject and the technical language that surrounds that subject helps you converse with others about these ideas. Those conversations are critical for the next step. All these changes seem to have a profound impact on our long-term health, as having a “purpose-in-life” (the technical term) has been shown to lower incidences of stroke, dementia, and cardiovascular disease.16 Additionally, from a performance standpoint, purpose boosts motivation, productivity, resilience, and focus.17 Happiness becomes untethered to income, because once we can meet our basic needs, the lure of all the stuff it took to meet them, begins to lose its luster. Once extrinsic drivers start to fade, intrinsic drivers take over.” In his book “ The Art of Impossible,” Steven Kotler demystifies the act of achieving big (and small) and the science behind how it works.

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

Peak performance is an unusual kind of infinite game. It may be unwinnable, but you can definitely lose. The brilliant Harvard psychologist William James explained it like this: “The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in coordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject—but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us, it is only an inveterate habit—the habit of inferiority to our full self—that is bad.”13 Treat fear like a playmate,” suggests Ulmer. “This transforms the emotion from a problem to be solved into a resource to be savored.”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. In practice, we are going to work our way through four main sections, exploring motivation, learning, creativity, and flow in turn. In each section, I’m going to break down what science can tell us about how these skills work in the brain and body, then, through a series of exercises, teach you the best ways to apply this information in your own life. Concrete Examples – You’ll get practical advice illustrated with examples of real-world applications or anecdotes.