The Art of Impossible

Just finished Book No.1 of 52 this year… “The Art of Impossible” by Steven Kotler . This book exposes what is required to shatter limitations, exceed expectations and turn dreams into achievements. Steven outlines the fundamentals of peak-performance and provides a framework for consistent peak-performance to pursue impossible big goals

Cognitive abilities: motivation, learning, creativity and flow are all vital. Motivation gets you into the game, learning helps you play, creativity is how you steer and flow is how you turbo boost results

Intrinsic motivation drivers

Drive has powerful motivators. Curiosity, passion and purpose are the launchpad towards achieving the impossible. To get to “impossible”, these need boosting with mastery and autonomy.

Passion is a potent driver but we need to transform the fire of passion into the rocket fuel of purpose. Purpose is the desire for what we do that matter for other people.

When multiple curiosity streams intersect, we amp up engagement and pattern recognition for linking new ideas and driving creativity, whilst sustaining long term focus.

Curiosity should increase and we then find yourselves slipping into flow, this is a good intersection to focus our energy on… not just a phase!

Our brains use pattern recognition to amplify learning, constantly being fed with information. Also training and learning every day puts us on the path to mastery allowing us to align curiosity, passion and purpose and enables the motivator, autonomy. Doing what we love greatly assists the path to mastery. It’s why work can feel like a hobby that you get paid for (something I encourage my children to strive for!)

Stacking (cultivate, align, amplify and deploy) our 5 most important intrinsic drivers: curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy and mastery enable us to achieve the impossible. These elements are neurobiologically designed to work together.

To “level up” our game, we need to reduce stress chemicals like cortisol, which can crush performance. Instead, we need to increase the brains reward chemicals (pleasure drugs): dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, norepinephrine and anandamide. Chemicals drive us to act and if successful they reinforce the behaviour in memory.

Layering Goals

Goals tell us exactly where we want to go and these are our anchor.

1. Massive transformative purpose (MTP) - mission statement for our lives
2. High, hard goals (HHG) and steps required to achieve MTPs
3. Clear goals – daily action plan (big focus on “clear”) required to achieve HHG.

Commit to hitting the clear goals and be sure not to take on too many each day, otherwise we wont be able to focus or get into/remain in flow and the cognitive load shall be distracting.

Achieving our clear goals means we are closer to our high hard goals and are “on mission”

Mindset is key, if you think you can or think you can’t, you are right!

Flow

Crossing off tasks on our clear goals lists provides dopamine boosts. Stacking these wins produces a flow (biological formula for the impossible). Flow is also the optimal state of consciousness where we feel at our best and perform our best which enables momentum.

Flow has 6 psychological characteristics and if they all show up, we experience a flow state: Complete Concentration, Merger of Action and Awareness, Sense of Self Vanishes, An Altered Sense of Time, Paradox of Control and Autotelic Experience

When in flow, surprisingly we use less of the brain rather than more. This is called “transient hypofrontality”. It means to temporarily slow down, shut down or deactivate.

Flow shuts down some of the higher cognitive functions like executive attention, logical decision making, sense of morality and willpower. This energy expensive system (conscious processing) is shut down and swapped out for faster and more efficient processing of the subconscious intrinsic system. Known as efficiency exchange, using the energy for heightened attention and awareness instead.

Recovery is important for the brain, gratitude, mindfulness, exercise and sleep are non-negotiables for sustained peak performance.

Grit

This is the persistence, determination, fortitude needed to continue with the journey no matter what. One of my past Leaders used to always talk about perpetual optimism (staying positive in the face of adversity, and finding a way). Coupled with Grit, this is powerful.

"No pressure, no diamonds" spoken by Philosopher Thomas Carlyle 300 years ago. Excellence has a cost. Sustained high performance is the grind. Harnessing intrinsic drivers and turbo boosting with goals is not enough… this is why grit matters so much. Grit is the energy to push through a difficult task and set of tasks for years.

Grit is a combination of Passion and Perseverance. Nice Segway to Book Number 2, “GRIT” by Angela Duckworth

In summary:

Step One: Find a passion and purpose

Step Two: Fortify passion with grit and goals

Step three: Amplify the results with learning and creativity

Step Four: Use flow to turbo-boost the whole process