How To Sustain High Performance As You Age | Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler (0:00)

The best thing about teaching myself how to play the guitar is I'm never gonna run out of guitar. I'll never run out of guitar. There's an endless amount of shit that I can keep. I don't run out of anything. I'm gonna keep learning, keep learning, keep learning. I think of skiing that way or writing that way. I actually think marriage that way. Like these are the infinite games, right? But their progression is built in, and you don't win, there's just the progression.

Michael Gervais (0:32)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training a high-performance psychologist, and I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back Steven Kotler to the pod for this week's conversation.

It's safe to say that Steven knows the power of pushing to the edge. Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, and one of the world's leading experts on human performance.

Steven is not only an 11-time bestselling author and a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, he's the kind of person who puts his own safety at the center of his research in order to challenge the perceived limitations of performance, and in a body that's not getting any younger. I think this is what they call walking the talk, in this case, skiing. At age 53, Steven set out to prove whether you can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks. Quite literally, as he set out to become an expert park skier, meaning jumps and tricks, and the potential for broken bones, it doesn't get much more punk rock than that. At the heart of this pursuit was an exploration of what he calls peak performance aging. I can't wait for you to experience Steven's badass approach to high performance, as we dig into the importance of flow and how access to it shifts as we get older. We also explore how engaging with our own developing superpowers like wisdom and creativity and forgiveness can help us. And even our teams huck ourselves successfully down mountains literally and figuratively. His expertise isn't just scientific, it's deeply personal. And if you're enjoying this podcast and haven't already, just a quick reminder to hit the subscribe or follow button and to drop us a review wherever you're listening. It is the easiest and zero cost way to support the show.

And with that, let's find out how to grow old and stay rad in this week's conversation with my friend, Steven Kotler.

Steven, this is number four that you've been on this podcast, and that's a record for us. So we're doing something right here where we're having a little bit too much fun or we're really like our folks want to learn from you. So it's awesome that you're here again. Thank you.

Steven Kotler (2:49)

We get to do it live.

Michael Gervais (2:50)

I know.

Steven Kotler (2:51)

Is this the first one live? I want to say the first one is live also.

Michael Gervais (2:57)

Yeah.

Steven Kotler (2:58)

But I mean, this is close enough for you to spit balls at me like you did last time. You know what kind of kid you were in high school?

Michael Gervais (3:05)

That might have been a theme for you. I was reading Gnar Country and I didn't realize. Yeah, right. It's coming up again. You can't slip stuff by psychology. It just kind of happens automatically. Okay.

So we'll get into some of the origin story for you. But when you told me a couple years ago what you're sorting out to do, and then when I read Gnar Country, I was like, oh, he did it. He did it.

And when you first told me, I was like, really? Is that what you're going to do?

Steven Kotler (3:36)

Yeah, you were part of the That's Impossible crowd.

Michael Gervais (3:38)

Yeah, like really? And then I was incredibly inspired by it. Like, I can't wait to see how this goes for you because it's a real thing that you're facing down.

But just to be clear, let's just start with this question, which is like, what are you doing with your life? Like, what was this really about? And explain the whole thing to your best ability. Let me just soak it in from your perspective now.

Steven Kotler (4:02)

All my work is, most of my work is in flow. And flow has deep ties into the world of adult development, has deep ties into the world of successful aging, peak performance aging, all of those things, flow plays a major role in. So, and it's not just Chick sent me high, I ended up moving in this direction, the godfather of flow psychology, so in following his work, you know, I started stumbling deeper and deeper onto these things around peak performance aging. And the long story, very short, you know, I grew up, like most of us grew up, with the traditional theories of aging, which is what I like to call the long slow route theory, right? It's the idea that our mental skills, our physical skills, they decline over time, there's nothing we can do to stop the slide.