How To Sustain High Performance As You Age | Steven Kotler
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2023
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s conversation is with Steven Kotler, a best-selling author, journalist, and one of the world’s leading experts on flow and human performance.
Steven has spent three decades teaching people how to achieve peak performance, and of late, putting his own advice into practice as documented in his newest book, Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad. In it, Steven challenges us to test our own limits as he himself sets out to become an expert skier at age 53.
Using his understanding of embodied cognition and flow science, he puts theories and his own body to the test in order to challenge the perceived limitations of peak performance as we get older.
He’s authored fourteen books, eleven of which are New York Times bestsellers. He’s been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize twice, appeared in over 100 publications, and his work is translated into over 50 languages; and yet, Steven’s appeal comes from far more than a list of very impressive accolades. While endeavoring to help others be at their best, he puts his own teaching into practice so his perspective isn’t simply scientific, it’s personal.
As you’ll find out in this conversation, Steven embodies true grit and refuses to allow getting older to hold him back from achieving his highest potential. I think we can all find inspiration in these insights from a real badass who’s living life to the fullest and inviting you to do the same.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the best thing about teaching myself how to play the guitar is I'm never going to run out of guitar. |
| 0:04.2 | I'll never run out of guitar. There's an endless amount of shit that I can keep. I don't run out |
| 0:09.8 | of anything. I'm going to keep learning, keep learning, keep learning. I think of skiing that way, |
| 0:14.2 | riding that way. I actually think marriage that way. These are the infinite games right there, |
| 0:18.6 | but their progression is built in and there's, you don't win. There's just the progression. |
| 0:30.6 | Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael |
| 0:37.2 | Jerve. I trade in training a high performance psychologist, and I am absolutely thrilled to |
| 0:42.0 | welcome back Stephen Kotler to the pod for this week's conversation. It's safe to say that Stephen |
| 0:47.2 | knows the power of pushing to the edge. Exactly the director of the Flow Research Collective |
| 0:51.6 | and one of the world's leading experts on human performance. Stephen is not only an 11 time best |
| 0:57.5 | selling author and a two time Pulitzer Prize nominee. He's the kind of person who puts his own |
| 1:03.4 | safety at the center of his research in order to challenge the perceived limitations of performance |
| 1:10.4 | and in a body that's not getting any younger. I think this is what they call walking the talk |
| 1:16.8 | in this case, skiing. At age 53, Stephen set out to prove whether you can, in fact, teach an old |
| 1:23.6 | dog new tricks. Quite literally, as he set out to become an expert park skier, meaning jumps and |
| 1:29.6 | tricks and the potential for broken bones, it doesn't get much more punk rock than that. And at |
| 1:35.6 | the heart of this pursuit was an exploration of what he calls peak performance aging. I can't wait |
| 1:42.5 | for you to experience Stephen's badass approach to high performance as we dig into the importance of |
| 1:48.8 | flow and how access to its shifts as we get older. We also explore how engaging with our own |
| 1:54.8 | developing superpowers like wisdom and creativity and forgiveness can help us. And even our teams |
| 2:03.6 | hook ourselves successfully down mountains literally and figuratively. His expertise isn't |
| 2:10.0 | just scientific. It's deeply personal. And if you're enjoying this podcast and haven't already, |
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