1: If we are hunting high achievement (and we are), “motivation is what gets you into the game, but learning is what keeps you there,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
Steven cites psychologist Gary Klein’s classic book on decision-making, Sources of Power, which identifies eight specific types of knowledge “that are visible to experts yet invisible to everyone else.”
o Patterns that
1: “My best friend, Michael Wharton, ran track in high school,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.Â
Michael’s coach had unusual protocols. “When they went out for long runs, whenever they encountered a hill, the team had to shift their focus entirely to core running skills: long strides, strong arms, high kicks. Note the focus wasn’t on speed or acceleration, it was on … continue reading
1: The default mode for peak performers is not recovery, rest, and relaxation.
“If momentum matters most, sitting still feels like laziness,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer. “And the more aligned with passion and purpose we become, the more ‘wasteful’ time off starts to feel.”
Yet, we need to prioritize recovery to avoid burnout.
“Burnout is identified by three symptoms: exhaustion, depression, … continue reading
1: The answer, according to one of the world’s leading experts on human performance?
Learning to be at our best when we are at our worst.
“And you have to train this kind of grit on its own, as a separate skill, But if we can do this, what we discover is real power. There’s real power there—and it’s power we probably didn’t know we had.” Steven Kotler writes in … continue reading
1: Fear.
“We often don’t even recognize that the emotion we’re feeling is fear,” says Kristen Ulmer, one of the world’s leading experts on fear, in Steven Kotler‘s book The Art of Impossible.Â
“Instead, it gets misinterpreted and redirected, showing up as blame, anger, sadness, or in irrational thoughts and behavior.”
To combat this tendency, we can develop an awareness of our fear by noticing it in … continue reading
1: Author Steven Kotler thought bravery meant not being afraid.Â
“I thought that was how ‘men’ were supposed to feel, or, more specifically, not to feel,” he writes in The Art of the Impossible.
The two words that changed his entire relationship with fear?
“You, too,” spoken by big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton.
Laird was showing Steven how to jump a jet ski off big waves. He promised Steven … continue reading
1: “There’s a little gap, no more than a millisecond, between the moment a thought arises and the moment our brain attaches an emotion to that thought,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
If we are interested in manifesting the grit to control our thoughts, then we are wise to pay attention to that gap.
Because once a feeling is attached to a … continue reading
1: “This is Impossible,” we think.
We can feel the frustration building inside us. “The hard work. The long hours. The voice in our heads telling us to quit,” writes Steven Kotler in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
If we want to be at our best, we must pay attention to our inner monologue.
“At the elite level,” notes high-performance psychologist Michael Gervais, “talent and ability … continue reading
1: “Early-stage passion doesn’t look like late-stage passion,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
Imagine LeBron James as “a little kid standing in front of a big hoop, trying to get his shots to drop,” Steven writes. “On the front end, passion is nothing more than the overlap of multiple curiosities coupled to a few wins.”
Sure, to be passionate, we want to … continue reading
1: When we reflect on our lives, what are our proudest accomplishments?  Steven Kotler asks in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
“Now think about how hard we worked to accomplish them. Sure, everybody gets lucky a few times. There’s always a handful of occasions when you get exactly what you want without having to work very hard to achieve it,” he observes.
“But are those the memories that … continue reading
