Author of The Art of Impossible with Steven Kotler
Making an oversized impact on the world will require more from you than you can imagine. The most successful entrepreneurs and the most driven people have created impossible things by tapping into their biology and the science of flow. Today’s guest is a remarkable author and research of the science of doing impossible things. Today’s interview is with Steven Kotler, New York Times bestselling author, peak performance expert, and executive director of the Flow Research Collective. We discuss his latest book, “The Art of Impossible.” Steven Kotler shares with you why you need three kinds of goals and gives you a plan for making a more significant impact on the world. I am thrilled to bring Steven Kotler’s big ideas to this podcast to make you a better leader.
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Steven Kotler: The Transcript
About: Steven Kotler is the Executive Director of The Flow Research Collective and Author of “The Art of Impossible”. The Flow Research Collective is a research and training organization. Our mission: understand the science behind ultimate human performance and use it to train up individuals and organizations.
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Steven Kotler
Don’t think very few people set up to go after capitalized hospital. Most people go after one small line possible. They go, wow, look what I accomplished. What else can I accomplish? And then it’s another one. And then it’s another one. Even the folks listening to this, who founded companies that are working in hospital spaces, they work, most of them work their way in there slowly, there are a bunch of smaller wins that lead to these future challenges. And I think what’s important about impossibly asked a question about like, why does this matter to people. And I think what matters is that small island hospital is the founder, going after those smaller ones seems to be the foundation of all of our lives. In a sense, we built the way I like to explain it. As I like to say we’re built to go there.
Intro [0:46]
Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett, I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?
Gene Hammett [1:03]
Extraordinary leaders often want to create the impossible, grading the impossible is not truly impossible. In fact, what we look at today with the author of The Art of Impossible, Steven Kotler, is about really some of the details and depth of what does it take to connect to the core biology that aligns you to creating what’s impossible to you? What I really mean by that is, we know what is it you have to be aware of, that you’re not aware of now, that will allow you to play at a higher level, Stephen researches, the really important things of high performance, he really runs the gamut of understanding what flow is and creativity and what motivation is, and all of the things necessary for you to play at a higher level. Stephen is the executive director of The Flow Research Collective, he’s also the author of The Art of Impossible, which have already said, but what we talked about today goes beyond just the surface levels of how do you get more done? But what’s really going on behind the scenes, we look at goals.
Gene Hammett [2:07]
In fact, what do you get wrong in your understanding of goals? And what can you do to better apply this new understanding to achieve the impossible in your own life, Stephen is an expert in all things, flow and all things, human performance. So I’m excited to share this with you today. Before we get into this, I want to remind you that if you are a leader looking to play the game, at a higher level, to do extraordinary things, and to go beyond what you believe is possible, then you want to make sure you check out fast growth boardroom, we have a collection of people that are coming together that are fast growth leaders, they’re the founders, CEOs, and presidents of ink level companies. These are the top 1% in terms of revenue growth across the world. When you think about your next step, as a leader, Are you clear about what it is? Would you like to be surrounded and supported by others that understand the chaos of fast growth, we’ll check out the fast growth boardroom, all you have to do is if it’s a fit for you, you would apply. Now you’re not committing to joining us because we want to make sure we bring in the right people, we will look up your application and invite you to a conversation to allow you to understand if this is a fit for you and what you would get out of it. But we also really want to make sure that you are going to add to the community of fast growth leaders. So check out fast growth boardroom.com. Now here is a conversation with Steven.
Gene Hammett [3:29]
Steven, how are you?
Steven Kotler [3:30]
I’m good. How are you, Jane?
Gene Hammett [3:32]
Fantastic. excited to talk to you about this newest book you have out but you really are someone that I admire for the work you’ve done, the impact you’ve made. I think you’re mostly known for your research on flow and how to connect to it. But I’m going to let you kind of start where you want to do Where do you want to begin today’s conversation?
Steven Kotler [3:52]
Well, I you know, the easiest place for me to start the story is sort of where the story starts. Because it’s an easy way of explaining my whole career in it kind of, hopefully, a quick format. I started as a journalist in the early 1990s, studying those moments in time when the impossible becomes possible. And I did this in almost every domain you can imagine, whether it’s Sports, Science, Technology, whatever. And it turns out whatever you see the impossible become possible. You see two things as a general rule, you see people harnessing disruptive accelerating technology. So six of my books have been about how do you harness disruptive accelerating technology. And the other thing you see is people figuring out how ways to extend human capability. And thus, seven of my books have looked at that side of the equation. And on that side of the equation, because often at the heart of peak performance, you see the state of consciousness known as flow, which is what I’m, as you pointed out, best sort of known for. I also started the flow research collective where we study the neurobiology of flow So what’s going on in the brain in the body when people are in flow and performing at their best. So that’s sort of like the quick and dirty people who’ve accomplished the impossible was my debt, my core data set. And you know, the the two ways a lot that happens in the world I’ve spent my career looking at.
Gene Hammett [5:17]
So I appreciate your your framing that in for us, we’re here to talk about mostly the art of impossible, which is your newest book. And I’ve really enjoyed reading it, we were just talking before we cut the recorder on, I enjoy it. There’s a lot of new information in here, which I think is really great when you read a book. And you’ve talked to so many people that you have new information. But it’s also it’s not the easiest read for me, I have to really think about what you’re saying and how it connects together, you’ve done a great job of really going into the depths of it. But I always ask authors this one question, why did this book have to be written?
Steven Kotler [5:49]
Well, that book had to be written because nobody else was doing it, in all honesty, I mean, so what then are impossibly over the past 10 years, the science of peak performance has accelerated massively, the same kind of exponential technology that’s driving change everywhere in the world has been showing up, especially in neuroscience. And we’ve gotten really good at kind of understanding the neuroscience of peak performance. There have been tons of books written about bits of the story. There’s books on focus, there’s books on grit, there’s books on flow, there’s books on motivation, there’s books on creativity, and learning, etc, etc.
Steven Kotler [6:23]
What has happened over the past 10 years, who started to realize that one, peak performance is nothing more or less than getting our biology to work for us, rather than against us and the biology. While it’s a vast category, in a sense, it’s actually a limited set of skills. And this not all and those are this individual books that everybody’s in writing focus, or mindfulness or mindset or take your pick. But it turns out when you when you look at this, the neurobiology of all these skills, there are a system and they’re designed to work together, they’re designed to work in a specific order. And it’s not like, you know, if you’re working on grid skills, you don’t know the whole system, it’s not going to help. But if you know the order, and everything, the way the entire system is designed to work and work in order, you just get farther faster with a whole lot less bus.
Steven Kotler [7:11]
So over the past 10 years, we’ve discovered one that almost everybody is capable of far more than they know. And to if you’re interested in really extending your capability, there’s a formula, it’s based on our biology, we managed to decode it over the past 10 years. And because flow is optimal performance, it optimizes everything that’s being optimized. So I because of the work I’ve been doing on flow, had the big picture. And nobody else ever, we as they’re experts at components in this in this picture of go far more than I’ll ever know. Scott Barry Kaufman, who is the world’s leading expert on creativity, and he’s one of my coaches, the flow research collective. So if you take one of our trainings, he might be your coach. He knows far more about creativity than I’ll ever know. But how it comes together, how it fits together, that is information that I had sort of first look at because of the work I was doing on floats the big picture. And because of that, I started to see how these things were working together. And I got to bring this completely around really to your audience.
Steven Kotler [8:14]
You know, I did a lot of work with Peter Diamandis Singularity University, I saw a lot of amazing people trying to start a lot of amazing companies to solve really big challenges in the world that need solving, water scarcity, energy scarcity, you know, all this sort of stuff. And you know, my books celebrate the success stories forever. Every story in the book, there’s 1000 stories of almost there. And usually, if you dig under the hood of why we’re the width, the failure come from, it’s not the entrepreneurial challenge. It’s not even the business challenge. It’s often people tripping over their own biology, tripping over their own kind of basic stuff. I don’t know how to solve hunger in Africa, I don’t know how to solve energy scarcity in the Middle East. But I do know how to solve this particular problem. So I think that’s why I wrote this book.
Commercial [9:05]
Now, let me take a break here for a second, if you are listening to this on your phone, you’re at the gym, you’re in your car, I really want to appreciate you. But you also want to make sure you tune into YouTube, we have some content on YouTube that we only put there a little bit more visual, some of the things that you need to be the extraordinary leader that you are is on YouTube, just go to genehammett.com/YouTube, we’ll see there.
Gene Hammett [9:26]
You keep talking about the biology of it. And there’s a lot of stuff in the book that I want to make sure we highlight for the audience because this won’t be able to we won’t be able to go into the depths of it. But a lot of times we are working against biology and if we understood how we’re working against it, we might have a better chance to to make it work for us. So can you give us an example of several of those examples.
Steven Kotler [9:49]
So simple example in the world is the book starts with on that when you talk about that biology By the way, let’s just all we’re really talking about is this what just skills that get filed under the heading of motivation, there’s a bunch of skills that could filed under the heading of learning. There’s a bunch of skills under the heading of creativity. And then there’s a bunch of skills under the heading of flow. And if why those four things, you just want to think about it. in any situation, peak performance is what gets you into the game. Excuse me, motivation is what gets you into the game. Learning allows you to continue to play creativity, especially if you’re trying to solve entrepreneurial challenges or high art challenges where there’s no clear path between where you are and where you’re going.
Steven Kotler [10:29]
Creativity is how you steer and flow because it is sort of the source code of optimal performance. And it we’re all hardwired for it is how you turbo boost the results, kind of beyond all reasonable expectations. That’s the full suite of things, but it motivations where it starts. And I spend a lot of time talking about intrinsic motivators. Curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, mastery, you hear a lot about that in the tech world, the Ontario world on the business world, but people mystify why these things matter. Why does intrinsic motivation matter?
Steven Kotler [11:01]
Well, one of the big deals is it gives you focus for free, when when we are faced with any challenge, there’s only two things we can work with, there’s this thing we’re doing, let the skill itself, and then there’s the amount of attention we’re bringing to the situation. Now skills as we know, all know, we can train them up. But it takes a long time. It’s a slow process. So if you’re looking for a big, fast lever, focus is that lever, right? And now the brain, it’s an energy hog consumes 25 to 30% of your energy at rest. So when you’re trying to pay attention to something difficult, it’s burning tons of calories, and we have a limited reserve. So why does curiosity matter? Because we get focused for free. When we’re curious about subjects, we automatically pay attention to the subjects, passion is even more focus for free than curiosity. Purpose goes beyond passion and so forth. So these big intrinsic motivators, why do we start talking about them, one of the big deals is focus for free. And we all know how difficult it is to try to pay attention to something or learn something or do something that we’re not interested in. We’re not motivated to do it. It’s difficult. That’s a simple example. It can go we can go on from there. But that’s easy.
Gene Hammett [12:17]
One of the reasons why I’m excited about having you on the show, Steven is because a lot of the people I work with a lot of the founders listening in today’s episode, really are trying to create something impossible. And maybe they’ve already created something impossible, and they’re trying to extend it into the impact and make a bigger, you know, legacy in the world. But when you think about creating the impossible framing like this, why this is so important, as we as humans evolve.
Steven Kotler [12:44]
Wow. Um, I that’s a really big question that may be above my paygrade. I the way what I talk about impossible, God, you’re asking a different question. I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to frame the impossible.
Gene Hammett [12:58]
Why is it… slowly became possible is we shouldn’t go after impossible?
Steven Kotler [13:05]
Well, I don’t okay. So what I can tell you is this. I wrote the book, in lessons learned from studying people who’ve accomplished what I call capitalised impossible that which has never been done. But it’s the book is for people who are interested in small I impossible that which you think is impossible for yourself. It’s those small I impossibles. A lot of them are, you know, things we’re familiar with rising out of poverty, overcoming trauma, getting paid for what you love becoming a successful entrepreneur, becoming world class at anything becoming a successful artist, or writer or creator. All those things are small line possible. And it turns out, it doesn’t actually matter if you’re interested in capital I because we’re small, I’m possible, or you listen to this knowing Dude, I don’t know about impossible, I just want it to be easier on Monday when I go back to work, right?
Steven Kotler [13:59]
Like, whatever, it turns out, the biology is the same, right? The tool set is the same how we would go A to B is the same. And that is available to all of us that which base and I also want to say I don’t think very few people set out to go after capitalized possible. Most people go after one small line pass when they go, wow, look what I accomplished. What else can I accomplish, and then it’s another one. And then it’s another one, even the folks listening to this who founded companies that are working in impossible spaces. They work most of them work their way in their slow there were a bunch of smaller wins that led to this, these huge challenges. And I think what’s important about impossibly asked a question about like, why does this matter to people? And I think what matters is that small if possible is the founder going after those small it seems to be the foundation of all of our lives, but in a sense, we’re built the way I like to explain it as I like to say we’re Built to go big, and not going big is actually bad for us. And that I don’t mean this in a ridiculous way. For example, we started this conversation talking about five intrinsic motivators, the big five that I talked about motivating the motivation category, just curiosity, passion, purpose, and then there’s autonomy and mastery, these are big five.
Steven Kotler [15:20]
So when I say human beings are designed to go big, we’re designed to rise to our full capability, or as a psychologist, Abraham Maslow once said, whatever a person can be, they must be, we’re built to go after these impossible challenges, and we don’t we have problems. What I mean by that is there are eight major causes of depression to them get a lot of attention, which are trauma. So the bad habit, me I can’t get over it. And genetics, I can’t make enough serotonin or norepinephrine or whatever to be happy. And it turns out, those are not actual real categories. As a general rule, your genetics where you have genetic issues, it’s only 50% of the equation ever. Meaning it’s genetics plus lifestyle choices are things that are going on the world and trauma, if you look at the data, most of the time, trauma leads to post traumatic growth, something bad happened and I got stronger as a result of it very rarely does it actually lead to depression, anxiety. So depression, anxiety are an epidemic levels right now, one out of 10 adults will be diagnosed with them this year, somebody kills themselves once every 12 seconds.
Steven Kotler [16:27]
This is mean, like we’re losing this epidemic, it’s a crisis. at a global level, there are six major causes that are left, they’re all things like lack of meaningful work, what is lack of meaningful work mean on when you break it apart, it’s work that you’re not curious about, that you’re not passionate about, that doesn’t align with your purpose and your core values, that you don’t have the autonomy to pursue in the way you think you should pursue it. And it doesn’t afford you the opportunity for mastery, I can go through the other five major causes of depression, that they’re all more of the same. The system is designed to work a certain way. It’s designed to go big, we’re designed to go after these impossible challenges and not doing so appears not to be particularly good for us, which is I think the other reason we want to go after them.
Commercial [17:13]
I want to take a moment and look at this small I impossible, because many times we leaders have to really understand what’s impossible for others and what’s impossible for ourselves. We don’t want to confuse the fact that what’s impossible for ourselves. Because typically, we’re able to break through those barriers if we really want to commit ourselves. Or after the interview, I had a conversation with Stephen about compound interest, if you think about small little daily increments and steps forward over time, will allow you to have the breakthrough that you can’t even imagine today. It’s like compound interest. But if you really want to create the impossible, you want to make sure you tune in to what those small steps are. Do them consistently, day in day out. Three years from now, five years from now, maybe it’s 10 years from now, you’ll look back and realize that you have shown up consistently to become the person you are today that can truly create something that’s impossible. Now, I just want to take a moment and put a spotlight on that for you today. Now back to Steven.
Gene Hammett [18:16]
I want to dive into one of the things I learned in the book from you and share that with the audience because I think it’s very valuable. Again, we’re talking about the art of impossible your your newest book, Steven. It’s really about goals. You make a distinction between clear goals, high hard goals and an MTP goal. Give us give us that breakdown and kind of help us understand why we get it wrong sometimes.
Steven Kotler [18:43]
Goal. We are goal directed machines human beings are. In fact, we don’t even live in reality, most of the information that actually makes it through our brains filtering mechanisms, it’s either our fears, stuff we’re scared up, or our goals, stuff we’re interested in going after. That’s much of the information we take in all the time. So goal setting is phenomenal. You’re like what more motivation in your life set goals. And what kind of goals? Well, it turns out the biology tells us that humans need three tiers of goals to get maximum efficiency. There are what I call a massively transformative purpose, mission level goals at the top underneath. Those are high hard goals. And underneath those are clear goals. Think of it this way. Let’s say your mission is I want to write books that change the world. Hi hard goals are all the sub steps you would have to take to achieve that mission level goals. Get a degree in journalism, get a job on a newspaper and learn how to cover stories. write a book about cooking, write a book, go up it whatever you want to write. Her goals are like one to five year action plans. And when you want to talk about getting your biology work for you rather than against you.
Steven Kotler [19:55]
Here’s another one, simply by setting proper higher goals. You get an 11 to 25% boost and motivate That’s incredible. Now high our goals are not what you’re going to be doing today. Today, you need clear goals. These are the tiny chunk down versions of your higher goals. That’s what you’re going to do today. So today, if your high heart mission statement goal is I want to write books to change the world. And your high hard goal that you’re on is I want to write a book about fishing. Today, you want to write 500 words in that book about fishing, that’s a clear goal. It’s a daily action plan. And when you have all three tiers of goals, and you know how to set them reliably, you get a lot of boost in motivation and energy, essentially, because when I started by saying we are goal directed systems, we simply get, we’re wanting to go a hell of a lot faster, if the system knows where it’s going. And the more precise you can be in goal setting, the better clarity really matters, especially by the way on the daily action plans. A lot of people especially Westerners, especially entrepreneurs, they hear goals, and they don’t they think about outcome goals I want, you know, to hit the sales figures, that’s not what I’m talking about. These are process goals, goals that you can control whether or not you achieve them. Outcome goals, that’s outside your control process goal, I’m going to write 500 words today in my new book, and it’s going to make the reader feel happy or scared or excited. You know, take it back. That’s a very clear goal. And really important because when you say clear goals is said to Westerners, we hear goals, we focus on the goals we don’t hear clear, and the real importance, there’s clarity.
Commercial [21:36]
Let’s take another moment here with Stephen, these clear goals, how does that really show up in our lives? Well, I’ll share with you how I’ve been using them. The clear goals really represent how you’re showing up each day, specifically, what are you getting done, and how you’re committing to being consistent over time, when I take a moment to do this, it’s in the day list out what I’m going to accomplish. I’m thinking about what I have already done, what’s missing, but also specifically what needs to get done. Now, I’m also looking at this with the filter of a leader of a company, I have a team behind me. And I know that I can’t continue to do all the things myself. So I’m constantly looking at what should I be doing versus what someone else should be doing for the organization. I want to make sure you understand what’s important about that. Because when you let go of the day to day task, you no longer become the bottleneck, and you actually become a stronger leader, a more of a visionary, empowering someone else gives them a step toward really serving the organization a new way gives them confidence. And that’s part of your job as a leader is connecting with others around this whole idea of growth. This is the way I use clear goals. Hopefully it’ll help you use them to.
Gene Hammett [22:45]
Steven, one of the things that I think is really powerful for this group that are listening in here. They’re pushing hard, they probably have the MTP goals, they have a high hard goal. But they’re not sure when to unplug, and they try to keep it going. You have some theories around this. I think you’re yours is that you have you target nine clear goals. Is that right?
Steven Kotler [23:04]
In a day? Yeah. In a day. Depends on the day depends on what my what the first chunk is, but yeah, nine, nine to 11 in a day.
Gene Hammett [23:14]
But you have probably wrestled with this, but you’d like to unplug Once you’ve done this.
Steven Kotler [23:19]
Yeah, so copy a couple of things, especially with hard charging executives, super critical. You have to. So we teach There are six levels of grit. Once you’ve got proper goal setting, the next thing that you have to deal with is grit. Now, we’re not going to talk about five of the levels. The last one is the grit to recover. Recovery is key. For our charging executives, their biggest problem they’re going to face is burnout. And we have found the research is pretty clear that if you have regular access to flow and an active recovery protocol, and you’re getting seven, eight hours of sleep a night, it’s very difficult to burn out. So seven, eight hours of sleep a night that’s clear. I give access to flow. We can talk about that in a minute. What the hell is an active recovery protocol, your body You got it, you literally forcing yourself to calm down you’re actually shifting your state a little bit what works really well. long walks in nature, by the way. work really, really well. Epsom salt baths, saunas, dry, we have a Infrared Sauna in our house that I use almost daily. restorative yoga, this is not fitness, yoga.
Steven Kotler [24:32]
This is restorative yoga, mindfulness breathwork, any kind of focus meditation, there are other options getting a massage. And the point with an active recovery protocol is and we’re setting clear goals as you pointed out, I you got to figure out and clear goals, how many things you can be excellent add in a day. And that’s how many things go on your clear goal list. And at the end of being excellent at for me it’s like nine things a day and then I’m out of juice. I have an active Recovery protocol. And I will probably take an Epsom salt bath or getting a sauna, or go for or go for a hike every day. Like that happened, this is a daily thing for me. And we really try to train up peak performance. And the reason we train it is a great skill is because peak performers don’t like shutting it down, it’s really hard to figure out that I need a recovery protocol. But the point is in peak performance, a lot of times, this is not everywhere. But this is one of those places, you have to go slow to go fast. And this is one of those spots and your actual work output, your speed will massively increase. And you’ll cut down on burnout, and burnout is you start moving backwards, right, the quality of your work gets so bad that you’re actually moving backwards. And that’s, that’s what crushes a lot of entrepreneurs.
Gene Hammett [25:52]
Steven, I appreciate you sharing this with us today. Because I think a lot of people have the tendency to push toward that burnout. And they don’t understand what it is particularly, one of the things I took away from the book really is that end of the day protocol. So you’ll spend five or 10 minutes planning your next day so that you know what those clear goals are. I found that to be very powerful for my own performance and what I’m doing. So I really would appreciate you bringing that highlights.
Steven Kotler [26:18]
So clear goals, they’re all so this is getting into the flow side of the equation, flow state states of optimal performance, we get so focused on everything and what you’re doing that everything else just sort of disappears. And in that state all aspects performance, both mental and physical tend to go through the roof. So how can we get more flow? That’s a really core question. clear goals. What’s that? What’s the thing that you’re feeling? This is exactly it flow without going and getting too complicated scientific, like the state only shows up when all our attention is on the right here right now. Right, you got to be focusing on the thing you’re doing and flows flow states have triggers three conditions that lead to more flow. And all they do is they drive attention to the present moment. And they do it one of three ways.
Steven Kotler [27:00]
The way clear goals work is they work by lowering cognitive load, cognitive loads, all the shit you’re trying to pay attention to it and they one moment and it weighs a lot. And it slows your brain down. And you have limited RAM, limited working memory, there’s only a limited number of things you can actually pay attention to your brain is always trying to figure out what am I doing? What am I doing next, right? Like your goals for the day is this, this takes something that you bring in always think about, when you create a clear goals list, you’re exporting all that crap onto a piece of paper, and it lowers cognitive load. So what you’re experiencing is a whole bunch of energy that you can then repurpose for focus and attention and a higher quality work. And that’s what it’s doing. It also is probably lowering anxiety, because there’s a part of your brain that always is always trying to figure out, I’m doing everything that I should be doing right now. And there’s something else that’s more important, like all that stuff. And even, you know, for those of us who have executive assistants, or you know, all these other outside peripherals that sort of handle this, I still wake up. And I do this by hand to the end every night. That’s my clear goals list from last night, and it’s for today. Today, it’s 13 things.
Gene Hammett [28:20]
I got to ask you, and this will be a final question. I saw the eight or nine clear goals that you have in there. What’s the paragraph underneath it?
Steven Kotler [28:27]
That’s my daily gratitude practice. You want to manage anxiety for peak performance, for sure. And positive psychologies, but really 30 years looking at this question of how do you what’s the best ways to manage anxiety. And what the science shows is there are three, you can do a five minute daily gratitude practice, you could do an 11 minute to 20 minute focus breathing meditation, you get 20 to 40 minutes of exercise, basically exercise until it’s sort of quiet upstairs. These are the three best ways to lower anxiety, what we try to train our clients do what I thought about a little bit in the art impossible is, hey, under normal conditions, do one a day, right. And if you’re super busy, gratitude is often the easiest one to reach for, because it’s five minutes long. But all of these things, lower cortisol levels, and they lower nor epinephrine levels, they automatically calm the brain and the body down. And too much cortisol blocks learning it blocks creativity, it blocks focus, it blocks a whole bunch of crap.
Steven Kotler [29:28]
So I end my day, the same way every day. I write take five minutes, try to clear goals list for the next morning. So I know by the moment I you know, my ass hits the chair, I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m going to do next. I know what I’m doing next. A and B I, I’ve used the I did the gratitude list the night before so that when I unplug, right the what gratitude does is it basically reminds your brain of all the good things that are happening in your life. Gratitude works because it’s stuff that It’s real. Like I am so happy and grateful my limbs worked all day today. My brain has an automatic bullshit detector. But I’m, I’m so happy and grateful I work it. I’m a millionaire. And I’m working at Walmart, my brain goes Shut up, shut the hell up, man, you work at Walmart, you’re not a millionaire, right? You can’t lie to yourself. Basically, gratitude is stuff that already happened. As a result, it literally tilts the amount of negative information the brain takes in, you start taking in more positive information, start noticing more positive things. for entrepreneurs, this is really important because you also start noticing more opportunity. And right fear will limit your ability to notice opportunity, which is really important for kind of founders, for entrepreneurs for for a lot of your listeners. So that’s the other half. That’s that paragraph is my daily gratitude practice.
Gene Hammett [30:48]
I appreciate you sharing us a peek into your own world. It’s not just something that you write about it for others, but you’re living this and that’s really as a…
Steven Kotler [30:55]
You know, the funny thing is people ask me this all the time, like what do you do? What do you do? I’m like, you get to the impossible. You’ll see there’s plenty of onboarding practices. last chapter. There’s six daily practices and seven weekly practices. That’s exactly what I do. That’s exactly what you know, the 70 people who work for me do, it’s exactly whatever video I try and do like that’s what the biology seems to say, is what works best. So that’s what we do.
Gene Hammett [31:20]
Steven, thanks for being on Growth Think Tank. Really appreciate it.
Steven Kotler [31:23]
Hey, my pleasure. Thank you.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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