Order of Man - STEVEN KOTLER ｜ Making the Impossible Possible

00:00:00.000 I know that you have lofty and ambitious goals. I do too. I also know that sometimes the objectives

00:00:06.380 that we desire may seem out of reach, if not impossible. And there's a myriad of reasons

00:00:11.380 that we may feel this way, but regardless of what those reasons are, they hinder our realized

00:00:16.180 potential. Today, I'm joined by a man who has not only studied making the impossible achievable.

00:00:22.100 He's also spent his life immersed and surrounded by the men who were doing it. His name is Steven

00:00:28.040 Kotler, and he is the author of the art of impossible. Today, we talk about why achievement

00:00:33.260 is an art, not a science, how to develop and trigger your quote unquote flow state, why everyone is

00:00:40.560 wired for peak performance, the power of novelty, and ultimately how to create the impossible for

00:00:46.600 yourself. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears and boldly chart

00:00:52.020 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time you are not

00:00:57.880 easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:01:05.000 This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call

00:01:10.380 yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the

00:01:16.040 founder of this podcast and the Order of Man movement. Welcome here. The first thing I want to

00:01:21.000 say is thank you. The download numbers that we've seen over the past several weeks and several months

00:01:27.600 now are exponentially increasing. You guys are tagging along on social media and following us

00:01:33.300 along there. Those numbers are increasing. So it's apparent to me that we must be doing something

00:01:38.180 right. I know there's plenty of room for improvement and plenty of room for growth, but I do appreciate

00:01:43.600 you being on this path and also sharing. A lot of people are sharing what we're doing because I think

00:01:47.920 you recognize that if we're to write and correct the ship, at least the direction of the ship,

00:01:53.440 then it's important that we get as many men involved in the battle to reclaim and restore

00:02:00.860 masculinity. And that's what this movement is all about. So the way that we do that on this podcast

00:02:05.280 is by interviewing successful men. We've had Goggins on the podcast, Jocko on the podcast,

00:02:11.780 Andy Frisilla. We just had Steven Rinella on the podcast. We've got an incredible lineup moving forward.

00:02:16.780 And my guest today is no different. So we'll get to that in a minute. All right, guys, let me introduce

00:02:21.460 you to Steven. I've literally been working on getting him to join us on the podcast for years.

00:02:28.020 And today that becomes a reality. Now, if you're not familiar with Steven, he is an author of his

00:02:33.900 latest book, the art of impossible, but also stealing fire, the rise of Superman. And I believe

00:02:39.180 I want to say 10 or 11 other books. He's also an award-winning journalist and the executive director

00:02:45.160 of the flow research collective. This guy's been featured in wall street journal time, the harbor,

00:02:51.380 Harvard business review. So obviously he's got a lot of information to share and he's very credible.

00:02:57.280 He's extremely, extremely fascinating and extremely intelligent as well. So gents,

00:03:02.220 I think you're going to enjoy this one. Steven, glad to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me.

00:03:07.840 Good to be with you, Ryan.

00:03:09.240 Yeah. I told you before we hit record that, uh, the concept of flow and, and the book stealing fire

00:03:16.400 was instrumental for me. And, you know, I I've recognized and acknowledged when I'm in this flow

00:03:22.660 state and when I'm not, and that's in large part due to you. I think just the ability to acknowledge

00:03:27.360 it actually helps you create it maybe and foster that flow a little bit more than if you're not

00:03:33.360 even aware that this is a, even a thing that's available to people.

00:03:36.200 I think you're right. I think one of the, what we found at the flow research collective in training

00:03:43.280 people is that one of the things that most people don't realize is that flow is a spectrum

00:03:48.860 experience, right? Like it's like any emotion, anger, you can be a little irked, you can be

00:03:53.260 homicidally murderous. It's the same emotion. Flow works the same way. There can flow, uh, is

00:03:58.560 psychologist defined by six core characteristics, complete concentration in the present moment,

00:04:04.260 time dilation, which means, uh, time passes strangely speeds up and five hours go by in

00:04:08.900 like five seconds or it slows down and right. And get that free from effect for more of these.

00:04:13.920 So you, they can all show up. Uh, you can have a state of microflow. This is where they all show

00:04:18.700 up, but they're really soft. They're dialed down to like one or two. So this is, you sit down to

00:04:23.600 write an email, you'll look up an hour later and you've written an essay and you didn't notice

00:04:27.480 time passing at all. You were totally focused on the essay and the quality of the essay is so much

00:04:31.960 better than you thought. And microflow is like right on the line between engagement, enjoyment,

00:04:37.940 and flow. There's a very thin line there. And then on the other side is macroflow and all the

00:04:41.980 preconditions show up at once. And this is what most people start to recognize as flow. Those

00:04:47.940 conditions, um, especially until you know what you're doing are much rarer. So what, uh, this is

00:04:54.180 research that this is not my research research that was done. I think it was Chick-Sentany High's

00:04:57.880 research way back in the seventies or eighties. He found most people spend about 5% of their

00:05:02.060 work life in flow often without even realizing it. And so as you pointed out, one of the first

00:05:07.340 things, if you could start to recognize microflow and you have a little bit of an understanding

00:05:11.760 about how flow works, you can turn back microphone into macroflow. You can start, you'll find yourself

00:05:17.160 in flow a lot more. You'll be able to extend state. You'll learn to work with the state a lot

00:05:21.300 more. Uh, so you're, I think you're totally right.

00:05:23.760 I think that's, uh, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but one of the things that I

00:05:27.960 got from the book, uh, and just your work in general is this, this concept and this idea

00:05:32.820 of decoding something, right? So the way I understand it is breaking it down into its individual

00:05:40.640 units so that you can better understand it and then replicate the process of flow and other

00:05:46.700 peak states of performance.

00:05:48.280 So the way I think about it is this. So the general rule in, uh, in the peak performance

00:05:58.700 in the coaching world and all, all that stuff, most people are trying to steer your performance

00:06:03.980 with psychology and they're saying things like mindset matters or optimism, you know, those

00:06:11.100 kinds of things. And those are all metaphors and they're metaphors for neurobiological processes.

00:06:18.260 Things that are actually happening in the brain that are allowing the, that are facilitating

00:06:23.120 these things. So we like to start with the neuroscience because it's actually mechanism,

00:06:28.000 right? Now it's not metaphor, it's mechanism. And peak performance is nothing more than getting

00:06:33.540 your biology to work for you rather than against you. Um, so understanding what that biology

00:06:40.920 is allows you to sort of decode mechanism and it's, um, so it's a lot simpler that way. It's a lot less

00:06:50.580 complicated as you probably discovered reading the book. Um, it's a lot more actionable and less

00:06:56.000 well. And, and for me, yes, I agree with all that. And also for me, it's more tangible, you know,

00:07:03.440 it's not this pie in the sky, like, Oh, just be happy and just feel good about life or whatever.

00:07:09.560 And, and, and all that stuff I think has its place. But for me personally, and this might be

00:07:13.860 a personality thing is that that's all wonderful, but how do you actually get to that point? And what

00:07:20.640 is it specifically that you do, which actually leads me to a question I wanted to ask because,

00:07:24.720 you know, you titled the book, the art of impossible. When I think of the term art,

00:07:30.000 I think of something that is not necessarily quantifiable. Sure. There's skill sets that

00:07:36.840 you need to, to develop in order to be artistic, but it's not replicatable necessarily. And it's

00:07:44.160 more of the beauty and the creativity and then it is the scientific side of things. But what you're

00:07:51.580 talking about is the scientific side. Yeah. For a guy who's writing an evidence-based blueprint for

00:07:55.960 peak performance, I need to know about this. Yeah. So one, there are, and I try to be very clear on

00:08:06.000 like the times in the book where I'm saying, Hey, look, there's no real research here, but this is

00:08:12.980 like, we, we know this is important, but the reason, so, you know, I often, I try to do some of my

00:08:17.800 own, but we can't, I can't say, Hey, this is hard science. This is like, I like, I'm crazy about

00:08:23.900 data and facts. And I like to say, if there's a fact in my book, it's been validated by like three

00:08:28.800 to five experts. You know what I mean? I really, so one, there's a handful of things in the book

00:08:34.240 that haven't. So that takes it completely out of the, like, that's a little bit more, but more

00:08:39.260 specifically, the book is a book for anybody who's trying to take on high heart goals, right?

00:08:46.060 Really sort of wants to step up and get the most out of their life and really go after bigger

00:08:50.780 challenges. And a lot of this stuff, the science is there, but how you're going to apply it in your

00:08:58.520 life. It's totally, that's you. And what I mean by that is let's make it really concrete. Flow

00:09:03.700 has 22 known triggers, preconditions that will lead to more flow. Which ones are going to work

00:09:10.920 best for you is literally, uh, depends entirely on you. Meaning it depends on your genetics,

00:09:17.820 your personality, your early childhood experience, and where you are right now in your life.

00:09:21.480 And those are not things that I am qualified to give you expert advice on is that you have to do

00:09:27.400 this right here. I can say, this is how it works. This is how you apply it, but you have to figure out

00:09:33.680 how to make it work for you in your life. And that's an art more than a science, right? Like you

00:09:39.940 can take, oh, this is the thing I'm supposed to do, right? You know, but you're going to have to

00:09:45.620 make decisions around it. And you're going to have to, the whole book, I say it over and over and over,

00:09:49.520 you're going to conduct your own experiment, right? You have to, you have to test some of these things.

00:09:54.280 I can, you know, for example, I tell people you need a clear goals list. Clear goals are a flow trigger

00:09:59.540 when, um, and it's, that's a, it's a well-structured to-do list for your day, right? And we can go into

00:10:06.260 more depth about it. But one of the things I tell people is look, my to-do list has about nine

00:10:12.280 things on it because there are not, I have the energy to be excellent at nine things a day.

00:10:17.400 That's me at 53. You might be totally different. You've got to test it. How many things can you do

00:10:24.240 it a day? And I'm, you know, I always tell people, put everything you're going to do. If you have to

00:10:27.400 have a conversation with your girlfriend or your wife, and that's going to take a lot of energy that

00:10:30.820 goes on the list. Like anything that's going to like, you have to really show up for and do if

00:10:35.560 that goes on the list. I can't tell you how many things you're going to be excellent at in a day.

00:10:40.220 You've got to determine that for yourself. That's a little bit of art. And the other thing that I

00:10:43.880 also think is that everything about the art of impossible is, uh, everybody's really great at

00:10:51.320 this stuff, puts this stuff at the center of their life. If they turn their, the point is to turn

00:10:56.500 your life into art. That's sort of double part of the point. Right. And that's, again, it's an art.

00:11:04.240 It's, I mean, there's a lot of craft and there's a lot of evidence and science and there are ways to

00:11:08.700 do it, but you're going to have to make decisions, big boy decisions for yourself. And that's where,

00:11:13.840 that's why I call it the art of impossible actually. That makes sense. You know, sometimes I see these

00:11:18.420 guys who are so hyper-focused on some of the things that you're focused on. They get into biohacking and

00:11:25.020 they look at all the data and the statistics and I'm like, what about the things that you can't

00:11:28.800 quantify? I think that's what you're. Well, that's the other, the other thing is those guys sort of

00:11:32.740 make, I mean, one, I don't understand that because the biohacking, you're wasting all your time on

00:11:39.520 really like low quality interventions. Like the psychological interventions are much more powerful,

00:11:44.420 um, but they're just not sexy. So you can't talk about them. They're not going to get you laid.

00:11:49.660 Bros aren't going to be down with you. Right. You know, I've got clear goals. I got a clear,

00:11:54.440 what did you do today? Oh man, I set this great clear goal list and then I accomplished everything

00:11:58.600 on it. Right. That's not as sexy as, oh my God, I was weighing my food and I fasted till 1137.

00:12:05.400 And then I weighed out my food and it's got like, I, those guys are fetishizing something that is

00:12:14.060 going to deliver very mediocre results, especially over the longterm. Um, in my opinion, I, um, this is

00:12:21.100 something I've got 30 years of research in, um, you know, I've got a lot of not great stuff to say

00:12:26.380 about the biohacking world. I'm not a huge fan, but mostly I'm not a huge fan because I think it's

00:12:31.260 a waste of time compared to the stuff that really can move the needle. Yeah. And I just don't think

00:12:36.300 it's enjoyable. So every once in a while I have somebody who'll reach out and they'll say things

00:12:40.160 like, you know, Ryan, what's your diet? And I'm, I'm not a fitness expert by any means. I don't pretend to

00:12:45.160 be, but my, my standard response is I eat meat, vegetables and drink as much water as possible.

00:12:51.920 Now the other 10% I could get into and everything else, but it's, it's not producing anything that's

00:12:59.900 significant. If you eat meat, vegetables and drink a lot of water, you're like 80 to 90% there. And

00:13:05.620 then you can take the other 10% and have a piece of pie when you feel like having a piece of pie.

00:13:09.660 And that's just fine. You should enjoy this as well.

00:13:12.400 Yeah. And I mean that like, what's your diet? Well, what are you doing all day long?

00:13:17.620 Tell me, right? Like that's a crazy ass question. First of all. And the other thing is,

00:13:21.660 is what the science shows repeatedly over and over and over and over again is dieting for sure.

00:13:28.980 What your diet is, that is truly an art meaning everybody is very individual. And what works for

00:13:34.240 me is never going to work for you. Um, that is very, very, very clear. And there is no one

00:13:40.920 diet. Oh, we evolve this way. Like you're out of your mind. That's insane. Um, there are

00:13:47.460 base, drink lots of water, eat whole foods, right? Like, I mean, you know, don't eat too much.

00:13:53.140 We know, we know, we all know that sleep seven to eight hours a night. This is what I mean with

00:13:57.140 biohacking crowd. Like I always tell people we do at the flow research collective, we do psychological

00:14:02.520 and sometimes physiological interventions. We don't really waste our time on technologies

00:14:07.720 or on substances. Um, and the main, you know, there are a lot of different reasons, but I

00:14:15.500 always sort of feel like if people are really spending a lot of time on that, unless you're

00:14:19.160 a Lance Armstrong and you're competing in the tour, like, unless you're that caliber.

00:14:24.820 Sure. And by the way, even then, I don't even know if it's, if it's like the smart move,

00:14:30.300 but I, it strikes me, you're looking for shortcuts. Every time I meet those people, I'm like my

00:14:38.240 friend, Dr. Andy Eberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford. I do a lot of work with he, he says,

00:14:42.780 and I totally agree with him. This should have gone an art of impossible. He says that the

00:14:46.960 thing people, performers know that everybody else doesn't know is it's always crawl, walk,

00:14:51.220 run, always crawl, walk, run. And most people, when they come to

00:14:54.800 a problem, they don't want to crawl. They don't want to walk. They're like, yo, I'd like to start

00:14:58.940 by jogging. How do I start by jogging? And they waste so much time looking for shortcuts rather

00:15:04.480 than actually just getting into the problem and doing, doing the work. And I, whenever I meet

00:15:10.220 the people in the biohacking crowd, unless they're really interested in the biology and it's a voyage

00:15:14.900 of curiosity for them. And then there's, you know, passion and purpose and a bunch of stuff that I,

00:15:19.460 you know what I mean? Then you're making the right decisions for you. But as a general, I sort of,

00:15:24.060 when I bump into those people, I think, oh, you're looking for a shortcut. You're not going

00:15:27.280 to get there. Right. Or you may get there 10 years from now when you're done looking for shortcuts

00:15:31.520 because everybody does this. This is essentially your early twenties, right? 17 to 26, 27.

00:15:39.780 You're mad that you're not where you want to go, where you are. And so you're looking for a way to

00:15:45.860 get there faster rather than laying down the actual habits that will get you there faster.

00:15:53.140 But that's, and I think that's very, very, very common, especially with men in their late teens

00:16:00.180 and early twenties. You see that a lot. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. And I can certainly

00:16:04.200 appreciate wanting to get to your goals as quickly as you possibly can.

00:16:07.740 No hate here. Like nobody was more ambitious. I love ambition. I'm a big fan.

00:16:12.020 I'm, I'm, what I'm literally saying is you're, you're, you're putting your energy into the wrong

00:16:16.500 place. Like you're really, you're spending a lot of time. And as you pointed out, it's a miserable

00:16:20.680 way to live. It's a mis, it's, it's, it's, it's attention to the wrong details. And it's just an

00:16:27.020 unpleasant way to live unless this is your thing. And then go crazy, then go hog wild. And I should

00:16:32.440 shut the fuck up. Well, and I think you can get into this, this idea of flow state and, and,

00:16:36.420 and accomplishing these things. If it's like you said, your thing, you know,

00:16:39.240 I've got a friend, Ben Greenfield, who is a self-proclaimed, I like that a lot.

00:16:43.760 That's his thing. That's his thing. And which is why I always tell people like,

00:16:48.900 and you know, my wife always complained because Ben's got really actually pretty good supplement

00:16:53.560 advice. You know what I mean? Like he is game is pretty good. And his research is interesting.

00:16:58.700 We have disagreements about stuff, but as general, you know, I like Ben, Ben. I like the people who run

00:17:03.940 his company. Yum. My wife always says, he's like, I can't do that shit because it's like a hundred

00:17:09.620 pills a day. And I'm like, yes, that's that's Ben being banned. And Ben loves it. And maybe he can

00:17:17.600 actually tell the difference in his pull-ups between I had MCT, you know, oil this morning or

00:17:23.280 didn't, but like, I sure can't. And I, you know, I, he's a professional athlete. I spend my time running

00:17:29.920 around the world with professional athletes. I ski with them. I mountain bike with them. I keep up

00:17:33.880 with them and I can't tell the difference, right? Like I try, this is the story I always tell people

00:17:40.540 ask me about nutrition. And I'm like, look, I tracked flow and skiing is my favorite pastime.

00:17:45.280 It's a thing I do. I get the most flow from it. I love it. I tracked food and nutrition for a decade

00:17:51.420 with skiing. You know what I found after 10 years of going skiing, how did I perform? And did I get

00:17:56.900 into flow? The only thing I consistently learned is on those mornings that I didn't have time

00:18:01.240 to make a good breakfast or do anything. And I stopped the gas station and bought literally

00:18:05.380 like hostess donut packs, right? That produced the most flow. I kid you not over a decade.

00:18:12.380 I thought you were going to say coffee.

00:18:14.160 Well, coffee isn't always with me. It's coffee and powdered sugar donuts, literally, which is my

00:18:19.260 like, oh my God, I forgot to make breakfast. I need quick fuel. That's going to get me to lunch.

00:18:24.160 What should I eat? And sometimes, you know, when I'm really like, I'll grab the donut because

00:18:29.260 they're right next to the cash register. And like literally like that correlated the most with flow.

00:18:34.500 And by the way, why? Because I'm really skinny and I burn a lot of energy and sugar. I have it

00:18:41.080 super, super rarely. It's not in my diet normally, except on those like crazy occasions. And, you know,

00:18:48.420 every now and again, maybe it correlates with flow for me, but it's not sustainable. First of all,

00:18:52.620 right. You know, if I did that every morning for a week, I'd be sick as a dog and you know,

00:18:56.600 that I'm going in the other direction. But that's my point is like, literally like I tried to track

00:19:01.400 this stuff for a decade. Flow is peak performance. It's the source code for all biological peak

00:19:06.380 performance. And there is not one study that says there's any diet whatsoever that can produce more

00:19:12.320 flow than anything else. And if that's the sort that that's the dead center of human peak

00:19:17.080 performance and there's no correlation with diet, then every, you know what I mean? Then you're

00:19:23.040 wasting your time trying to get like, if you're wasting your time, you need energy for flow. It's

00:19:28.340 a high energy state. So like you need enough fuel to go. That's what we know. And there's no other,

00:19:34.480 there's no other data. And so figure out what the psychological that flow triggers are, how they

00:19:39.520 work. You'll get way more flow than measuring how much salmon you're eating at night.

00:19:43.420 Yeah. I mean, so the couple of things that you said right there, as you were talking about

00:19:48.000 physiological and psychological interventions, and I was thinking about this, as far as diet goes,

00:19:52.600 I was thinking about eating, you know, a double quarter pounder hamburger, although it feels good

00:19:57.360 momentarily. I know that physiologically it doesn't help me. It doesn't serve me even in the short term.

00:20:02.940 And even psychologically, I feel guilty. I'm like, Oh, I shouldn't have had that. And I'm thinking

00:20:07.600 about other things than actually performing correctly. And so even though having other food,

00:20:13.420 might not be as momentarily satisfactory, I noticed that my performance improves because

00:20:19.760 I'm worried about the physiological and the psychological, uh, ramifications of eating

00:20:25.520 that particular food or engaging in that particular activity, whatever it may be.

00:20:29.640 I think with food. So you asked a question about the art boss, I said, all of life is an art,

00:20:34.980 right? And like, you just brought up a really good point, which is we get very precious about our,

00:20:41.140 about how, how does it feel? Does it make me feel good kind of thing? And the thing with food is

00:20:47.280 your experience of taste and the pleasure of taste. It's like what a second or two, meaning like

00:20:55.240 when you bite into a McDonald's hamburger versus you bite into a bunch of carrots and celery and

00:21:02.100 whatever, how many bites does it actually taste like hamburger? How long until it be, everything's

00:21:09.440 sort of indistinguishable, mushing your mouth, right? What are you talking about? Like two, three,

00:21:14.180 four seconds of pleasure, right? Kind of thing. And you know, by the way, that the end of the

00:21:18.300 hamburger, you're probably going to feel sick, right?

00:21:21.240 Like, you know, by the end, like, right, you know, like, you know, you stop McDonald's,

00:21:26.320 you're like, Oh dear, this is great for two bites. But like the third or the fourth bite,

00:21:30.340 you're like, wow, I kind of feel a little nauseous right now. And we've all had that

00:21:35.020 experience a bunch of times. So like, I'm like, wow, you're making this, you're indulging hedonism

00:21:40.940 and pleasure for like the stupidest kind of pleasure. Like it's going to last three, four seconds,

00:21:47.100 like you're going to get three seconds of pleasure, three or four times, five times,

00:21:51.380 but it's like 15 seconds of pleasure versus like the fuel you'd get from a better meal.

00:21:57.200 I don't understand the math in why you would make that kind of decision. And so learning to not,

00:22:03.200 that's an art, you know what I mean? That's not really, yeah, the evidence says all these things.

00:22:07.880 I just laid it out in a very logical common sense manner, but learning to do that on a daily basis,

00:22:13.260 reframing pleasure and saying, are you sure? Wouldn't it be more fun to like get close to

00:22:19.880 your goal than have 15 seconds worth of pleasure? Like, isn't that a much more sustainable long-term

00:22:25.060 pleasure that would anybody reframes the problem that way? 90% of the time they're reaching for

00:22:31.040 whatever is going to be the healthier thing. Sure. 10% of the time you're going to give in.

00:22:34.200 And then, then you're probably giving it the right time. Now you're making a good decision. Yeah,

00:22:38.740 exactly. So is this what you're talking about? And now I tell you, get hella baked and really

00:22:43.040 like the cheeseburger. Just appreciate it in those momentary times, right? Is this what you're

00:22:48.980 talking about when you say intervention? Cause you said, uh, physiological and psychological

00:22:53.340 intervention is, is what you do. So explain that a little bit, break that down. Let me, yeah. So

00:22:59.280 if I was being a drama queen, when I, when I really want to make this payment on stage, what I do is I

00:23:05.340 look very serious. And I say, you know, back when I was a journalist on five separate occasions,

00:23:09.700 I was shot at, this is true. Um, and at no point when that happened, did I look at the person who

00:23:15.480 was shooting at me and say, excuse me, sir, would you put down that AK 47? So I could pick up this

00:23:20.960 EG headset and neuro hack my brainwaves into alpha. So I've got a better shot at dodging your bullet.

00:23:27.260 Like that shit doesn't happen in the real world or, you know, more familiar than they less

00:23:32.380 dramatically. And the boss says, yo, Ryan, get in here. I need you to do that presentation.

00:23:37.140 We're going to do next Friday. I need it now. And you're going to do it for me, my boss, her boss,

00:23:41.400 and her boss. And by the way, your job in the future of the world depends on it. At that point,

00:23:44.940 it can be like, Oh dude, I need to kick, take the micro dose and wait for it to kick in.

00:23:49.280 Right. Or the much more familiar one that we've all had, honey, can you come here for a minute so I

00:23:55.000 could talk to you? Right. When you hear, right. When you hear, honey, right. What's going on?

00:24:00.460 No, they're like, you've got, you've got a couple seconds to diurnal yourself into the right state

00:24:07.860 to win that moment in time. Otherwise you've got, you know, problems basically. And that's,

00:24:14.180 I usually try to give myself space in that situation. So I'll say something like,

00:24:18.560 is everything okay? Which is basically code for just give me a few more seconds to process what

00:24:24.280 the hell is happening right now. By the way, I've tried because you could try like, honey,

00:24:29.140 I'm probably going to be much better to have this discussion with you in like two hours.

00:24:34.580 That has, I have never found that works as much as like, I've heard it works. Therapists recommend

00:24:41.740 it. Like, well, I don't know anybody's relationship that is, that holds that particular, like, I don't.

00:24:48.040 It's kind of like telling someone to calm down. Like it's, it's, it sounds good in principle,

00:24:51.840 but it's never going to work.

00:24:53.980 It's true. There's a handful of people who can tell me to calm down and that, but usually it's

00:24:58.400 in very, very strong language. And there's people who don't usually use that language.

00:25:02.380 Completely.

00:25:02.860 Right. When my, what, what, like when my business partner is like, Steven, I can't fucking deal

00:25:06.960 with you right now. You got to calm the fuck down. I'm like, oh shit, I crossed the line.

00:25:11.020 Yeah. Because he never talks to me like that.

00:25:13.760 For sure. So anyways, I interrupted. Go back, go back to intervention.

00:25:18.500 What you're saying with intervention.

00:25:20.800 And so, and the thing is like, for example, as I said, flow hacking, right? Clear goals is a very

00:25:27.260 powerful flow. I get lowers cognitive load. It does a lot of stuff and we can talk about the

00:25:32.660 neuroscience of it and why and whatever, but people would much rather for reasons unbeknownst to me,

00:25:40.860 do something like fast every Monday or right. Or do like all the millions of those things.

00:25:48.460 Have a ketogenic diet, go paleo, like do all that stuff rather than write a daily to-do list

00:25:54.600 and check things off the list and stack it in a specific way. So it works with our biology

00:26:00.580 because it's not, as I said, nobody's, you're not going to get laid being like, dude, I got a

00:26:06.280 clear goal list and I checked everything off or novelty is a flow trigger. So I'll give you another

00:26:12.660 example. I have to read a lot of neuroscience textbooks for my job. They're, you know, I really

00:26:17.600 like neuroscience and I really don't mind reading some of them, but they're, they're, it's textbook

00:26:21.140 down. It's same, same difficult, boring slog as anybody reading a textbook. So novelty is a flow

00:26:27.080 trigger. And when we're in flow, learning rates are accelerated. And there's tremendous amount of

00:26:32.880 research on this. So I will always go to, if I got to read a bunch of neuroscience textbooks,

00:26:40.260 I will check into a hotel someplace I've never been with a balcony in my room. I don't even care.

00:26:46.040 It could be microscopically big that looks out onto a very novel broad vista, something like

00:26:53.640 mountain ranges or whatever that I've not seen before, or even a public square with cool things

00:26:58.900 in the distance and like just cool people watching. And I will read out there on the balcony because

00:27:03.920 the novelty of the environment is going to start producing dopamine in my system. I get a bunch

00:27:09.100 of dopamine into my system. It's going to drive me into flow. I get into flow. My learning rates go

00:27:13.060 up. And by the way, my pattern recognition rates increase. So not only are I going to learn more,

00:27:17.680 I'm going to notice more cool details and it's going to spark more now creativity, et cetera,

00:27:22.480 et cetera, et cetera. That's not super sexy again. Like that's not super sexy. There's nothing there.

00:27:29.760 And people want, they want something sexy. They want something that feels like a quick fix. They

00:27:33.780 don't, that doesn't feel like something that's going to produce outsized dividends, right? It just

00:27:41.340 doesn't. Um, it's worse than the 21st century where we really have gotten used to like shiny,

00:27:46.960 shiny, blinky, blinky technological interventions, that sort of stuff. And, um, these are just really,

00:27:54.060 really basic, simple, you know, neurobiologically based interventions, um, that really move the

00:28:02.740 needle because they get, they get our biology to work for us, right? They're not, you're not trying

00:28:07.360 to, there's hack. Anybody who says biohacking, there's no such thing as a hack, right? There's

00:28:12.920 no meaning. There's no such thing as a performance shortcut. Sure. A good hack. I like the only

00:28:18.940 thing that I can think of, we like to look for what I call multi-tool solutions. In my opinion,

00:28:24.820 peak performers are too busy to solve problems one at a time. I don't know anybody who's a peak

00:28:31.260 performer who can write, who can really do that. So what's a great multi-tool solution?

00:28:36.680 Mindfulness, a mindfulness practice, a great multi-tool solution. Why? Because 11 minutes

00:28:43.300 of mindfulness a day of breath work a day is shown to significantly reduce stress,

00:28:49.900 significantly enhance focus, significantly increase resilience and emotional regulation.

00:28:56.420 These are like five of the biggest determinants in peak performance. And by the way, the ability

00:29:01.180 to delay gratification, a couple of other things. It's a single tool, very applicable, very easy,

00:29:06.460 evidence-based, usable by anybody, almost in any circumstance. And it's solving like five or six

00:29:14.160 problems that you're going to have to solve anyways on the way to peak performance. So go for a

00:29:18.580 solution. And I don't even do, so I also, you need an active recovery protocol. If you read Art

00:29:24.760 Impossible, we talk about having at the end of your day, not passive recovery, active recovery. Active

00:29:30.180 recovery is like restorative yoga or mindfulness, breath work, a long walk in nature. I like an

00:29:38.820 infrared sauna and I like an infrared sauna for a lot of different reasons. One, massive boost to

00:29:44.520 your immune system. Two, lowers cortisol automatically. It's one of the few things that will de-stress you

00:29:49.740 automatically. It's amazing. And I do a very specific breath work protocol. I like, that's what I do by

00:29:57.440 mindfulness, but I have a specific kind of protocol I use that trains up four or five things that I

00:30:02.480 need to train up on a, you know, almost on a daily basis. So I sandwich it all together. So I've got

00:30:07.380 my active recovery protocol and inside of it, I've tucked, I breath another multi-tool solution.

00:30:15.200 So those are the kinds of tools I look for. I look for things that I can integrate already in my life

00:30:21.700 easily. It already fits into a slot. And I look for things that are going to solve three or four or

00:30:27.240 five problems at once. Cause you know, one at a time is too slow. I move to solve problems one at

00:30:33.580 a time. Well, not only is it too slow, we just don't have enough time in the day to do everything

00:30:38.420 that everybody on the history of the planet has ever suggested to improve our health. Like you've,

00:30:43.500 you've got 24 hours. You've got less than that. You've got 18 hours, right? 17 hours.

00:30:49.000 And that's, and you know, as I said at the end, the end of the book, like there's a bunch of

00:30:52.360 onboarding stuff. There's some stuff you have to do to get into the game, but by the end of the art

00:30:57.900 impossible, you know, I, I, I like to say peak performance is a checklist and it's literally six

00:31:04.260 things to do every day and seven things to do every week. And of those six things, like three or four

00:31:09.340 of them are very short, quick, five minute things. A couple of them fit into things that are, uh,

00:31:14.700 you're already kind of doing. And, um, a couple of them are, um, such big, big boosts in performance

00:31:23.680 that if you start integrating them in, even though it's going to take time, you'll get the time back

00:31:28.100 pretty quickly, um, in spades. Right. So, um, it's really like you can waste your time on all that

00:31:35.760 other stuff, but the biology says, Hey, six daily interventions that really seem to make a difference

00:31:41.460 here in seven weekly things. So, okay. So let's riff on that a little bit. So what's interesting

00:31:47.160 is you're talking about novelty. And I started thinking about this thing that we've got right

00:31:50.500 here and I, and I call it a battle planner. Anybody that's been listening to the podcast or movement

00:31:54.520 for any amount of time knows what this is. And it's been really valuable for people. It's called

00:31:58.700 the battle planner. It goes through their goals and whatnot. People are excited about this, but if I

00:32:04.100 were to strip everything away and get rid of the marketing and everything else that goes into selling a

00:32:07.800 product, right. Cause that's what I, that's what I'm doing. Essentially it's setting goals. Like

00:32:13.380 that's all it is. This is not new information. This is writing out what you need to get done today

00:32:17.840 and then checking it off when you get done. That's it. And what the, and what the biology shows,

00:32:22.280 you know, I talk about this at length. Um, but I'll just, is there three levels of goals you need

00:32:28.180 right for your life? You need a mission statement level goals. You need a series of high,

00:32:32.720 hard goals, which are the steps to accomplish, you know, mission statement is I want to write

00:32:37.560 great books. Our goal is I want to get a degree in creative writing. I want to work for a newspaper

00:32:42.140 and get my skills down. I want to write a book on cooking. I want to write a book on

00:32:45.700 ax throwing. I want to write a book on deer hunting, take your pick, right? Um, those are your higher

00:32:52.940 goals and your clear goals are what are the steps you're going to take today to accomplish those higher

00:32:57.740 goals. And more importantly, by the way, when you say clear goals, two things are important. One emphasis

00:33:03.480 falls on clarity, not on goals. These are process goals, right? You it's really about knowing exactly

00:33:09.560 what you're doing. So your focus stays locked on task and cognitive load is lowered. That's the

00:33:16.680 whole point of goals from a neurobiological level. Um, and also the big mistake, a lot of people make,

00:33:22.800 they talk about their goals out loud. And you see this a lot in, uh, in younger, anybody who's 35 and

00:33:32.380 below right now, very purpose driven lives, mission driven lives, which is awesome. Totally like love

00:33:37.740 that. But what the research shows is like we say this at the, at the flow research collective, it's

00:33:42.120 literally in our bylaws, have a mission, stay on mission, keep it to your damn self. It's talking

00:33:49.000 about your goals out loud is actually be motivated. When you talk about your goals out loud, your brain

00:33:55.180 will actually release the dopamine that you would normally get when you actually did the work to

00:34:00.220 achieve your goals. So you're just robbing yourself of the very fuel you need. And I, you know, I always

00:34:06.440 like to remind people, um, one for anybody who's actually like done hard shit in their lives, when they

00:34:13.120 hear somebody talking real, real bad boys move in silence, right? Don't tell me what you're going to

00:34:18.840 If you have to tell people you are, you probably aren't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, it's funny because

00:34:23.300 I'll see things on social media where people will say, I'm going to run a marathon. And then everybody

00:34:27.660 will congratulate them for making the decision to run the marathon. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:34:32.120 They haven't actually done anything yet. I know. Like they haven't even started training yet. I know.

00:34:36.400 I know. I know. I know. I say it all the time. Like I, like I literally like, I don't, I don't, I'm not

00:34:43.280 listening to the words coming out of your mouth hole. I'm not, I'm looking at what you've done,

00:34:48.540 right? Like I don't, I don't as a general rule until I know what you've done, you've done. I don't

00:34:56.160 actually believe the words coming out of your mouth hole. I think most people are marketing

00:35:00.140 themselves to me rather than, you know what I mean? Sure. And to themselves. I think they're trying

00:35:07.040 to, and look, I'm, I'm, I'm not saying I'm above this. I'm guilty of this too, is trying to convince

00:35:12.300 myself that I'm good or I'm worthy or I'm strong or I'm capable or whatever. Yeah. And from a human

00:35:18.780 perspective, look, I do this too. When you are trying to level up your game, when you're trying

00:35:23.160 to take over a little more territory in the world, it's scary. And you sort of like, you got to sort

00:35:28.880 of arrogant up, right? You're going to like, there's going to be a little bit of time where you're

00:35:34.260 going to, um, where you sort of have to lead with your ego. I, maybe there are people who

00:35:38.140 can find a different way to do it. Um, I try to like, I know that I'm going to have to do

00:35:43.540 that. So I try to like take really big precautions to guard against the assholeness that I know

00:35:48.440 is going to come. You know what I mean? But I know it's going to come because it's just

00:35:52.180 a natural reaction to like, Oh my God, I'm trying to do this new thing in the world. It's

00:35:55.700 hard and scary. I got a sort of like, I got a bad ass up a little bit and you know, it's

00:36:01.820 a certain level of it is useful. Um, I, but I, I really like, I try to like keep it on

00:36:09.440 like, what am I going to do today? You know, that sort of stuff. And the other thing, more

00:36:12.660 importantly, I was just talking to this about this in a different conversation. I say this

00:36:17.740 in the book, if this stuff really matters, you learn to keep your word to yourself, right?

00:36:24.320 Like in my mind, if I put something on a clear goals list on my to do list for the day, I've

00:36:29.160 made a promise to myself to do it. If I say something out loud, it's like, I, I do it

00:36:36.320 right. Like I don't say it out loud if I'm unwilling to execute on it. And I, right. And

00:36:42.180 I always, you know, so I, I really make sure that I, if I promise, if I say to myself, I'm

00:36:47.740 going to do it, I always do it. Other people, I will say things to occasionally and I have

00:36:51.960 to come back and be like, Hey, I said that thing to you, but change of plan, blah, blah,

00:36:54.880 we're going to do. But if I make a promise to myself, I always keep it because it's the,

00:36:59.540 when you get in the habit of breaking your promises to yourself, saying you're going to

00:37:02.840 do something and not doing it, it's the, you're moving everything in the total wrong direction.

00:37:07.960 It's really, really, really.

00:37:09.480 I know I've said in the past and this, I know it's a little bit hyperbolic, but I've said

00:37:13.660 things like, you know, when, when you break a promise to yourself, a little bit of your soul

00:37:17.280 dies, but I think that's actually true. And I think it undermines your own performance.

00:37:21.260 I want to go back to something that you said about, um, I think the term you said was ego

00:37:26.600 up or something along those lines. I had this boss and I won't, I won't say who it is, but

00:37:32.600 I had this boss in my life and he was very, very successful, very successful. And every

00:37:37.080 time he would open his mouth, I'd, I'd wonder why he was so successful. Cause I thought to

00:37:41.840 myself, this guy is delusional. He, he believes what he's saying about himself and it's not true.

00:37:47.760 It's not objectively true, but he believes this he's delusional. And I used to think

00:37:52.740 that that was a character flaw. And then I realized that maybe it's the bit of delusion.

00:37:58.160 And in your case, I think you're calling it egoing up. That actually is what has made

00:38:02.640 him successful because why would we believe that we could do something that we don't have

00:38:06.880 the right to believe we can.

00:38:08.100 I do think, well, so there is, so they call it the banister effect. You familiar with the

00:38:15.460 banister effect? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I wrote about it in Rise of Superman,

00:38:19.460 right? This is, this is literally the, the correlation between brain body is so tight.

00:38:23.840 You have to, if you're going to take on impossible goals, right? Like literally those kinds of

00:38:28.320 challenges, one of the secrets to accomplishing the impossible. And I've spent right 30 years

00:38:32.940 studying people who did things that were supposed to be never possible, right? They

00:38:37.940 accomplished, they literally accomplished the impossible. And you have to literally believe

00:38:43.840 you're capable of accomplishing the possible before you can accomplish the impossible because

00:38:48.180 of how the neurobiology works. It's like, you can't do something that you cannot sort of see

00:38:55.440 yourself doing. Right. Right. And it's, there's just a very tight correlation between the visual

00:39:01.520 system and our, and our own performance and things like that. And so if you can't see it in the mind's

00:39:05.560 eye, it's not, you can't bring it into, uh, the real world for a lot of physiological perspectives.

00:39:12.660 So you're going to have to, you know, when you're stepping up, you're, you actually have to believe

00:39:18.160 you can, you know, do the thing that you're doing. Um, so I, I don't think it like, you shouldn't be

00:39:28.640 overestimating your skills along the way. You know what I mean? I think it's really important to have

00:39:33.440 really accurate assessments of like who you are and what you're capable of. Set the higher goal,

00:39:39.420 right. Like be a guy in a wheelchair who says, I'm going to climb Everest. Um,

00:39:45.100 so you know what I mean? Like, okay, cool. Climb Everest. Um, but like, what does that mean?

00:39:50.260 Well, that means today you're going to have to like, I don't know, learn how to walk on your hands.

00:39:54.720 So, you know what I mean? Like you gotta like, sort of like get real legit about your skills,

00:39:59.780 set the high, hard goals and really start to believe that it's possible. You have to,

00:40:03.420 to level up your game. But I think all kinds of crazy things might be true for me. I keep them

00:40:09.880 inside. I just don't write what, what has happened is, is this, I'm not saying don't,

00:40:16.020 you know what I mean? I love, I wrote a, just wrote a book for people with really unreasonable

00:40:20.020 expectations for their own lives. Right. I say so in the first paragraph. Um, and by the way,

00:40:25.680 I will tell you that line on a reasonable expectations from a friend of mine, uh, former Navy

00:40:29.640 seal, Brian Ferguson, we were talking one day, he's a great, uh, performance mind himself.

00:40:34.240 We're talking about, you know, what distinguishes seals and spec ops guys. And he's, well, one of

00:40:39.640 the things I know is everybody I've ever met who's a seal has unreasonable expectations for

00:40:44.440 themselves, their own performance. They will never talk about that out loud. Right. Like you'll never

00:40:49.780 hear. Um, but, uh, and there's way sort of like ways to play with it, but like, I'm not saying

00:40:56.460 don't try to step, don't need to go up, but like I keep the delusion to myself. Gentlemen, I got to

00:41:02.360 hit the pause button, the timeout button real quick. Uh, I don't think it's any surprise to you

00:41:06.360 that we've, uh, started to see a huge crackdown of sorts, uh, by the technology giants and anyone

00:41:15.520 who doesn't toe the line with what is acceptable in the doctrine of popular culture, which I've talked

00:41:20.360 about in the past. Now, if you've been following me for any amount of time, you know, that what we

00:41:24.500 talk about the restoration of masculinity isn't necessarily a favorite subject of theirs. Uh,

00:41:29.860 with all that said, we've created a closed frame brotherhood because we're about providing solutions

00:41:33.660 here, a closed frame brotherhood of like-minded men, where not only can we have the real conversations

00:41:39.500 that need to be had, uh, but we can also challenge each other when necessary, uh, to do the work

00:41:46.000 required, uh, to lead ourselves and our families and communities and business as well. So if you're

00:41:51.520 interested in banding with other men who believe the way that you do and are actively working to

00:41:58.480 make themselves better in all ways, I would invite you to join us inside of the iron council.

00:42:02.960 You can learn more and you can band with us at order of man.com slash iron council. Again,

00:42:09.040 that's order of man.com slash iron council. You can do that after the podcast for now. Let's

00:42:14.060 finish things up with Steven. Is it the faking it till you make it mentality or like, where is it?

00:42:20.820 Where's the line there? The way it was explained to me and I, you know, and I wish, I don't know if

00:42:26.260 this, I think this is, this is true. I, the first chunk of your life, let's say the first half of

00:42:32.240 your life. Um, at that point you're promoting yourself, whatever it is that you're trying to do

00:42:38.820 second half of your life, you're attracting, right? It's already, you're, you're there,

00:42:43.020 it's coming to you and you want to like, so there's a transition. So first of all, like know when you've,

00:42:48.860 you've made that transition first of all. Um, but I, you know, there's a certain portion,

00:42:53.840 especially if you're interested in entrepreneurship, if you're, you know, trying to do any of that stuff,

00:42:57.900 some of it, you know, comes with aspiration built in. Um, I tend to be very cautious,

00:43:07.420 my aspiration. Like if it comes out of my mouth, I better be able to do it. I don't,

00:43:11.180 you know what I mean? And I don't, um, I, I like personally to under promise over deliver on

00:43:17.120 everything. So that's, that's how I go at it. A lot of entrepreneurs will like, they do the exact

00:43:22.820 opposite, right? They oversell, oversell, oversell. These are marketers. Sure. And, um, I, you know,

00:43:29.560 I don't think that, I don't think you're doing yourself or any, anybody else a favor. I also think

00:43:33.640 here's the ultimate truth of the matter. I, so Stephen philosophies, and yes, I'm now talking

00:43:40.960 about myself in the third. Stephen isms. Sure. Stephen isms. Well, I mean, you, this isn't even

00:43:45.660 mine, but like, um, it's always a competition. Like it doesn't matter what you think. Right. I always

00:43:52.340 tell people, um, whenever I published an article in a magazine, there were literally probably 10,000

00:44:00.260 journalists who they said no to for every one article they said yes to every book that I publish,

00:44:06.180 you know, how many other books were turned down. So my book was a yes. I never saw those people. I

00:44:11.960 wasn't being, you know what I mean? Or I know, um, it wasn't direct competition, but right. But I look,

00:44:18.520 I also know because I've done this a long time. I've got a book coming out in January. Well, it's going

00:44:23.020 to compete against every other book that's coming out in January. Right. And I'm going to go up against

00:44:27.660 the movies that are right. I like, I understand all that stuff. And, um, always like one, I will

00:44:34.820 always like do everything I possibly can to kind of outwork the competition. I never forget that it,

00:44:39.780 that, that it's a competition all the time. I can't remember how I got here.

00:44:45.460 Where did we start? You asked me a question and I took it sideways. I stopped thinking about

00:44:50.600 something in the middle of it and I got lost. I feel like a moron too. Sorry. All right.

00:44:55.780 Ignore that. It's always a competition. That's what's a Stephenism. Um, it is a Stephenism. I

00:45:00.980 always, I do tend to think of, of all of it. I was talking about faking to fake it till you make

00:45:07.360 it or that's what I was referring to. Oh yeah. I'm sorry. So the thing the marketers forget now I got

00:45:12.620 it is quality is the ultimate distinguisher. Quality wins in the end, always wins in the end craft,

00:45:23.820 quality, all that stuff. I always laugh. Like when people, I, I, a lot of thought leaders take,

00:45:30.020 um, end up taking my book, my class flow for writers. And I, you know, I, so I train a lot

00:45:34.540 of really super smart people who want to write books about kind of what, what they are doing in

00:45:38.980 the world. And I always, I always laugh because they always sort of think like I'm so-and-so and

00:45:43.480 all I have to do is write a book and it's done. And I say, well, you know, maybe, you know what I

00:45:48.600 mean? If you're Barack Obama, um, or Michelle, right? Like, okay. Sure. There's some other

00:45:52.860 factor there. Right. If, but if you don't have that kind of history, remember you're competing

00:45:59.000 against guys like me. I've got 40 years experience and I care a massive amount about craft. I'm

00:46:06.540 willing to get up and work on the same sentence for five hours in a row to get it right. I will,

00:46:12.640 for every one page that's in any book of mine, I have probably thrown out seven other pages that

00:46:18.820 weren't quite right. That's the level of craft and attention to detail and quality that you're

00:46:24.380 competing against. So if you're spending all your time selling yourself and you're not spending all

00:46:29.960 your time working on your craft, you're, you're, you're, it's only half the equation. And ultimately

00:46:34.960 like you may be figure out how to market yourself into a quick splash, but you don't have longevity.

00:46:40.460 You're not going to be around for very long. And people like myself who really are going to work

00:46:45.080 their asses off on the craft are going to laugh because we're going to have the good ideas and the

00:46:49.780 craft and you're just going to have a good idea. So I think this is good advice for, for me and

00:46:54.580 somebody like me who tends to be very action oriented and driven towards move, like move the needle.

00:47:01.400 Sometimes I feel like I need to take a step back and worry and focus more on the craft. But I think

00:47:06.240 there's a lot of people out there who are the opposite where it's all about craft.

00:47:10.460 And it's like, when are you going to get your ass off the couch and actually do something?

00:47:13.980 Yeah. That's the other, that's the other side of the coin, right? Is another peak performance skill

00:47:19.100 that is, I think really hard to learn. Um, and there's a bunch of stuff in art and possible that

00:47:24.340 sort of moves you in this direction is you got to learn how to make decisions really fast. You got

00:47:29.500 to learn how to act really, really quickly. I always, so in the book, I talk about the habit of

00:47:33.240 ferocity, which is the ability to automatically lean into and rise to any challenge before you

00:47:39.220 stop thinking about it. And the example I like to give is if you can develop this habit and,

00:47:44.300 and you know, it's about stacking up and aligning your intrinsic motivators and proper goal setting

00:47:48.060 and proper growth skills. But if you can get there, what you end up saving is, I always say that like

00:47:54.880 when hard decisions show up in our lives, I, let's say I make five hard decisions in any given day.

00:47:59.740 I think that's probably, you know, maybe that's about average. I don't know. Um,

00:48:03.560 most people want a hard decision shows up. They're going to sort of fuck around for five,

00:48:09.120 10 minutes. I don't, God damn it. This sucks. I'm going to, you know, call my wife and bitch,

00:48:13.520 but I can't fucking be right in their brain. Sure. Whatever it is. Um, then they, and then

00:48:19.660 they're going to do it anyways. It's not like you have a choice. Like the reason you're mad and

00:48:23.280 you're doing all the drama stuff is because you know, you've got to do it and you don't want to do

00:48:26.700 it. Peak performers, people with the habit of ferocity, they just lean in because they know

00:48:32.160 like why waste the time. And it sounds like a no big deal. You say five minutes of decision,

00:48:37.560 right? You you're going to fuck around for five minutes. I'm going to lean immediately. And

00:48:40.880 that five minutes of decision, I'm making five decisions a day. It's 25 minutes a day,

00:48:45.980 three and a half hours a week, three and a half weeks a year that I'm ahead of you. Right. You want

00:48:53.400 to know why people look so far ahead of you? It's not like we, there was no shortcut. There

00:48:59.040 was no biohack. There was no, we didn't waste time on all that nonsense. Right. I'm three and a half

00:49:04.680 weeks ahead of you simply because I know I'm going to do the hard thing anyways. So I'm not going to

00:49:09.860 waste my time on the front end. Think wondering, am I going to do this thing? No. Cause I'm just

00:49:15.080 going to do it. I'm just going to lean and I'm going to get gritty and I don't care what it feels

00:49:19.900 like. Cause it's going to feel bad 15 minutes from now, or it's going to feel bad now.

00:49:23.580 Right. Just get it done. Rip the bandaid off. It's the same thing. Right. Yeah. So on that one,

00:49:28.500 like I, that, those are, that's what I mean by a psychological intervention. Right. Nobody would

00:49:33.300 think, okay, like not dithering for five minutes, the front end of a challenge is going to give me

00:49:39.220 more performance benefit than some biohacking, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't, it's not intuitive

00:49:46.340 that that's the right answer. It's not right, but that's the real answer.

00:49:52.540 Yeah. That makes sense. You know, sometimes I'll look at my list and, and sometimes where,

00:49:57.320 wherever my motivation might be, when we talk a little bit about that, I might say, okay,

00:50:00.220 I'm just going to pick the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest thing to do because I need to build

00:50:03.420 momentum. And sometimes I look at my list and I'm, and I think to myself, I'm going to pick the

00:50:07.820 hardest ass thing on this list and I'm going to knock it out of the park. First thing, because I know

00:50:12.180 everything else will be easier because of it. I used to have this, I called it a chicken list.

00:50:17.280 So I acknowledged, I was just being afraid. And when I was building my financial planning practice,

00:50:22.060 I had a list of people that I wanted to reach out to and connect with. And 80% of them, I had no

00:50:26.620 problem connecting with the other 20%. I was afraid of because they were somebody I respected or they

00:50:31.800 were wealthier than me or whatever. I had put them on some pedestal and I called it my chicken list

00:50:36.440 and I hesitated on that list. But what I realized is when I started calling that list,

00:50:41.040 I would get the yeses, I would build the business, I would grow my business.

00:50:44.820 And I realized that I spent all this time worrying about something that I couldn't control.

00:50:49.560 And I wish I would have just gone through my 20% chicken list before I even went through the 80%.

00:50:54.060 Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's a lot of different wisdom and everything you just said,

00:51:01.120 but I, I, I agree with it. Uh, short, short answer. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I don't disagree with

00:51:07.060 that. We spend a lot of time, we waste a lot of time and we burn. Most of it is the anxiety is the

00:51:15.980 biggest blocker to peak performance. And if you have a thing that you're not, so there's a part of

00:51:22.280 the brain that stores open loops. Basically, if you have a problem that you're trying to solve and you

00:51:28.920 can't quite solve it, there's a part of your brain that holds onto it. And it does it so that if you

00:51:33.640 encounter anything that could be a possible solution, it can grab it quickly.

00:51:42.560 The good side is, is that the bad side is it's always there at a subconscious level, right? It's,

00:51:48.860 it's weighing on you and cognitive load, which is all the crap you're trying to think about at any one

00:51:55.260 time is a huge blocker for, for performance, right? Any time you're creating excess anxiety,

00:52:03.620 or excess cognitive load, you are blocking performance. And all, a lot of those, so like

00:52:10.400 knowing you've got a chicken list, every time you go to make a call and you're like, oh yeah,

00:52:16.740 but I'm not making that one. There's a part of your brain that sort of gets it. This is,

00:52:20.980 so I'll give you another example that you guys are going to be familiar with,

00:52:23.800 but probably never knew why it worked. So everybody's familiar with Maria Kundun wants to come in and clean

00:52:29.260 your closets and it's going to help you perform better. The reason that works is cognitive load.

00:52:35.260 So the more I lower cognitive load, the more I liberate energy that can be repurposed for attention

00:52:40.900 on the task at hand, basically. And when you go into your closet and you've got a shitload of stuff

00:52:47.620 in there, and we've all got like, I got like three or four things that used to be my favorite thing,

00:52:52.740 but then I was wearing at that time I crashed on my mountain bike, or I was wearing at that time I

00:52:58.440 got in an argument with my wife. And even though I'm not superstitious at all, I just like, I don't

00:53:04.820 reach for it right away. I like, I look at it and I go, I like, and then I go on. Every time I do that

00:53:10.060 subconsciously, my brain is remembering the bad thing. And it's taking a little bit of emotional

00:53:15.360 energy. It's a little bit of weight. It's a little bit of collar load, totally subconscious.

00:53:19.500 Just don't even know what's going on. So what happened when she comes in and cleans your closet

00:53:23.780 and throws out, why does your filter, does this bring you absolute joy? That's the question she's

00:53:29.680 asking. If it doesn't bring you absolute joy, throw it out. What she's saying is, are there any bad

00:53:34.380 memories associated with this? Or is this just taking up space, right? You want to like, you're

00:53:40.120 taking out the thing stuff, taking up space because it's cluttered because it's now you have decision

00:53:45.020 fatigue, right? So we're removing decision fatigue, but also you're monitoring for cognitive

00:53:50.220 load for the emotional shit. It's sort of like buried in your closet in ways that you're never

00:53:55.300 going to even notice, but it extracts a performance benefit, right? So that's another weird, less than

00:54:01.040 obvious, you know, we've all sort of heard that, like, why does that work? Well, there's a reason it's,

00:54:05.420 you know, there's neurobiology underneath that and a little bit of mechanism.

00:54:08.220 Have you, so have you studied the concept of minimalism? I think that's what you're touching

00:54:13.520 on here as a benefit of peak performance. I, you know, there are certain things like

00:54:19.300 I essentially, I'm wearing a black sweatshirt 98% of the time. I tend to wear black almost all

00:54:27.900 the time because it's a, I don't want the decision fatigue, right? I like, I want to save my energy

00:54:34.280 for some other stuff. And so there's a lot of that stuff. I don't fetishize minimalism. I don't

00:54:39.600 like you. I like, yeah, I'm a big fan of it. I think it's got a lot of stuff that that's great

00:54:46.040 about it. And I really like it personally, but I don't want to fetishize it. And I think a lot of

00:54:51.600 people have fetishized it. I'm not, I, you know, I not a big fan of a lot of stuff, right? I like a lot

00:55:01.300 of books and see that like things that couple, but like, there's just, you know, but that's just

00:55:07.380 me. And if you're a fan of stuff, you know what I mean? If like, that's a thing for you and that

00:55:14.520 is energizing for you, then minimalism is probably the wrong way to go and trying to like, you know

00:55:19.980 what I mean? And the other thing is I think fetishizing any of that stuff ultimately is getting

00:55:25.500 the way of the risk when you're spending so much time trying to be minimal because you wanted to

00:55:30.980 save time in the first place. Well, now you're, you know what I mean? Now it doesn't make any sense

00:55:35.780 and you've just got a fetish. It's like the, uh, the couponing that people used to do. Maybe they

00:55:40.600 still do it, but it's like, you're going to spend, you know, three hours saving $4. Why not, you know,

00:55:47.300 just not buy the thing or whatever. There's a thousand other ways to save $4 and spend,

00:55:52.080 right? Exactly. You can do a thousand different things. Right. Yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. I'm with

00:55:57.380 you. I like, I just, I try to be, I try to be really wise about it. And you know, I try to like,

00:56:04.740 I try to, I, you know, I try to like a lot of peak performance and a lot of, a lot of mistakes

00:56:13.620 people make is because they've automatized the wrong behaviors and they, so they start and they

00:56:18.840 start to audit, like when you become, when you fetishize, whatever it is, your, your keto diet

00:56:24.400 or your minimalism or your, whatever, whatever it is, um, you're burning more energy on the fetish

00:56:32.320 than you're getting from the thing that you're doing. And to me, that's sort of like about the

00:56:37.700 only thing that I fetishized is reading books because you know, that's where they keep the secrets.

00:56:43.580 Yeah. And I think you probably find value. Again, I don't want to put words in your mouth,

00:56:50.440 but, and this goes back to what we were saying about biohacking. If you find value in the action

00:56:54.680 itself, like intrinsically, it's valuable, the action of doing it, whether it's biohacking or

00:57:00.300 reading, then that's a different story than doing it for like a different purpose.

00:57:04.320 Totally different thing. Totally, totally different thing. If, you know, if the thing you're doing is

00:57:08.420 aligned with your curiosity, your passion and your purpose, like your intrinsic motivators,

00:57:13.600 all point in that direction, absolutely go crazy. That's exactly what you should be doing.

00:57:19.280 So this goes back to routines. You talked about the six things you should do every day and the

00:57:23.180 seven things you should do every week, but you also talked about novelty. So I'm wondering if

00:57:28.540 there's a point in time where a routine becomes a detriment to peak performance.

00:57:33.420 Well, I think, I think, I mean, first of all, I, you know, have breaks built into your routine,

00:57:41.240 right? Like, like I, I've got very strict routines. I also know when it's time to break from my routine

00:57:47.520 as well, when it's going to start, you know, it's moving me in the other direction as well.

00:57:51.140 Um, so that's the first thing I don't, um, I'm a big fan of novelty. Um, but I don't, um,

00:58:00.520 and you can get the same dopamine you get from novelty, from complexity, from unpredictability,

00:58:07.660 from insight. Um, so there's a lot of like what you're after is the dopamine. There's a lot of

00:58:14.080 different ways to get it. Um, I, it's not that I'm not a fan of novelty. I, you know, I,

00:58:19.260 I like a lot of my novelty from books. I said, look for, you know what I mean? Their books are

00:58:23.840 super multiple tool solutions. They provide a lot of novelty. Oh my God, look at these ideas I've

00:58:29.060 never been exposed to before. It's a novel. Oh my God, check out this world. You, I've never thought

00:58:33.860 about things from the perspective of a, you know, Malay, Malaysian peasant woman in the 16th century.

00:58:39.700 And you know what I mean? Like, yeah, sure. So novels are novel in that way. And so there's,

00:58:44.680 you know, there's, there's, there's that kind of stuff as, as well. Um, and you know, people are,

00:58:51.260 are, I'm a, I'm also, you know, I, my novelty, I like it with in certain containers. Like when I ski,

00:58:58.340 right, there are like four or five runs every time where I want to go see something I haven't sort of

00:59:04.140 skied before different line. Um, and that's sort of, so like, I'll, you know, I want the freestyle

00:59:09.200 inside the container rather than outside the container a lot of the time. I also have a job

00:59:15.080 that allows me to travel a lot. So it comes built with some built-in novelties. So I don't have to

00:59:19.200 sort of do as much as, as I think some other people. So that's again, why it's an art and not a,

00:59:25.180 not a sign. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I even think about myself. In fact,

00:59:31.140 I'm just going to grab something here. Cause I wanted to show you because I think this kind of ties

00:59:34.260 into it is, you know, I, I'm a man who operates on routines very well. If I have a system and a plan

00:59:38.760 and if anything gets out of order, it's really weird and hard for me, but, um, I've tried to

00:59:43.080 implement novelty. And so I, I just jumped online and I bought these plans cause I'm going to build a

00:59:48.760 canoe. My wife's like, so I bought this canoe and I spent thousands of dollars on build, buying this

00:59:54.140 kit and the plans. And my wife's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know. And that's why

00:59:58.420 I want to do it. Cause I want to try it. I want to experiment. And if it works out good. And if it

01:00:02.400 doesn't work out good because I tried something different, I learned something, uh, I think it

01:00:06.780 flexes the creative, uh, creative muscle. And I mean, and the, you know, the science shows by the,

01:00:12.520 we don't know literally. So I always like to say that human potential is invisible, even to our,

01:00:18.640 especially to ourselves. And that statement has two, uh, there's two reasons. One is we only find

01:00:25.480 out what we're capable of by stretching our skills to the utmost again and again and again. Right.

01:00:30.560 And, you know, William James a hundred years ago pointed out that like most people know what a

01:00:35.440 second wind is, but they often don't realize they have a third wind and a fourth wind and a fifth

01:00:40.660 wind and a sixth wind cause they never pushed. Right. Second winds are rare cause most people

01:00:44.600 don't push back that fatigue point. So they never discover. So that's, that's part of it. Another

01:00:48.880 part of it is, there's overwhelming amounts of science that says you don't know what you're going

01:00:53.580 to be good at or what you're going to like from the outside. You have to try it and actually

01:00:59.220 start to develop some skill levels before you could actually judge whether it's for you

01:01:04.180 and certain stuff. Like I always wanted to build a house with my bare hands.

01:01:10.220 And I just thought that was a thing that like, I just, you know what I mean? Let's say

01:01:15.060 when you wanted to build a canoe, I'm not the world's most mechanically inclined person,

01:01:20.380 right? It's not natural. I'm not naturally gifted that way. I like, I literally can repair

01:01:26.180 almost any, I have over the years repaired almost anything with my hands. Once I get,

01:01:31.220 I put a dishwasher back together. I could never do it again. Did it once, but you got it.

01:01:36.320 You're like, shit, but I didn't want it. Right. Check. Exactly. I had to do it. Same thing

01:01:39.280 with, I like, I built the house with my hands and we didn't even use power tools. I wanted

01:01:42.100 to like, literally like, but we, we used electric saws. We didn't use nail guns. That was a dumb

01:01:47.400 move, but there were probably way too many nails on that one. That was, that was, that was crazy.

01:01:52.260 But like that, I'm never going to build another house. You know what I'm like by my, blah, blah,

01:01:57.200 blah. But I like, that was one of those experiences where like, it was just on my list. Right. Got it.

01:02:03.140 It's on the list. You got to just, you know, those are things where, you know, those are the kinds of

01:02:07.340 novel things that I'm for. Right. That's what I mean. It's within sort of like, it's sort of within the

01:02:12.260 container in a sense. Um, it is, it is in a lot of ways within a container. Cause I think 99% of the

01:02:21.260 things that we do like this, whether it's building a house or a canoe or picking up a bow or whatever

01:02:25.660 your thing is that you feel, or a guitar, it feels interesting to you. 99% of them, it's just

01:02:31.300 going to be in that container. But what I found is there's one to 3% of the time. And I'm just using

01:02:37.280 arbitrary numbers here that you might actually discover and unlock something that needs to be

01:02:43.640 explored further. I think a lot of people don't take these steps.

01:02:46.580 No, I, I, I agree with that. Um, and I like, I run a lot of experiments. Jeff Bezos once said to

01:02:55.140 me when I was writing bold, he said the success of Amazon really comes down to how many experiments

01:02:59.740 I run per month, per week, per day. And still like, yeah, he says that all the time, like rapid

01:03:07.600 experimentation. Part of it is that immediate feedback is a flow trigger, right? So, you know,

01:03:13.720 it, it'll shift you towards flow, which is, which is a good thing. Part of it is,

01:03:17.400 you know, at running agile companies and things along those lines. Um, and so I'm constantly

01:03:25.040 running experiments. I'm just not running them all over the place. You know what I mean? But I mean,

01:03:32.260 I'll give you an example. So every year, uh, until I, I got it right for a very long time,

01:03:37.940 I had a different person train me starting every, uh, July to prep for ski season 10 years until I

01:03:46.060 figured out what is the thing that I, cause I, I came up with this idea that I wanted to be able

01:03:52.540 to finish ski season when the snow goes away. And I wanted to found, figure out how do I train in

01:03:57.540 the off season so that when next season starts, I'm actually better than I was at the end of last

01:04:02.400 season. Like how do you get better in the off season? Right. When you're not actually doing

01:04:06.840 the thing. When you're not actually doing the thing. And so it took me a very long 10 years

01:04:12.460 of experiments, um, to get it right. Right. I like, as, as you know, and you'd get super,

01:04:18.760 oh my God, German volume training is going to be the seat. No, actually it was the fucking,

01:04:23.020 the worst disaster out of everything with German volume training. That was, if you're,

01:04:26.740 if you're interested in, uh, access sports, don't German volume training is not your friend.

01:04:31.500 Oh, I, I'm not, I don't even know what that term means. So I'd have to look into it.

01:04:35.240 The kind of weight, it's a kind of, it's, it's, you do a push and a pull

01:04:40.700 exercise. You go to the gym and you do, uh, you'll do incline bat, uh, bench and bent over

01:04:48.160 rolls. And it's so row. Sure. Okay. 10 sets of 20, uh, in one and then 10 sets of 20 with the

01:04:56.280 other. And that's the whole workout. It's massive amounts of volume on very restricted exercises.

01:05:01.620 And it builds a lot of mass very quickly. Um, and, uh, people have found it doesn't translate

01:05:09.620 into anything. It's not usable strength. It gets you a little bit bigger. Right. And so you'll look

01:05:14.300 a little prettier if that's what you want. You want to translate into actual on the mountain

01:05:21.400 strength, which is what I was looking for. So, you know, I run tons of experiments all the time,

01:05:27.180 um, that way. So that's what I mean. Like I'll total, I mean, there's some of the stuff that's

01:05:31.620 on the bucket list and then there's some of the stuff is I'm doing it this way, you know,

01:05:35.320 is there a better way? And, you know, I will always tell you when my team comes through with

01:05:39.080 an idea every single time. Um, and I, and the flow research collective right now is about 60 people.

01:05:45.500 I think is how many people are working for me about, uh, so working with me, I shouldn't say

01:05:49.900 whenever somebody brings me something, I always say, okay, are we sure we've gotten big enough?

01:05:54.320 Can we go bigger? And it's not that we may go in that route. It's that I don't think most people

01:06:00.200 think big enough. Um, they don't think it's scale. And I like to, you know, I like to play it at a big

01:06:06.160 level. And so I mostly, it's a habit. You've got to like learn how to do that. And so I'm always

01:06:11.860 asking those kinds of questions and that's a, that's a hunt for a very specific kind of novelty.

01:06:17.160 So, and right, like inside, inside of the box, inside the cadena, I don't, there's not a good,

01:06:23.920 I'm not talking about this in a very eloquent manner, but I think you're just bringing up a

01:06:27.760 really good point. Um, that's worth kind of poking at. So I, and, and knowing that we're going to have

01:06:34.000 this conversation, I was thinking about because you study peak performers, you interact with them,

01:06:39.120 you engage with them, you go into their environments. And one thing, because I have,

01:06:43.320 I've had the opportunity to interview, I think it's close to 300, very, very, very successful

01:06:49.040 men at this point, I've noticed a reoccurring trend. And I wanted to ask your perspective on

01:06:53.280 that. And the trend that I see with a lot of these guys is there seems to be the best way I can

01:06:57.800 describe it as some sort of, uh, a chip on their shoulder a bit, like something to prove or some sort

01:07:04.520 of attitude that, so I'd be really curious what you think about that. I, this is, I, so I write

01:07:10.520 about this in art of impossible as well. And the way I phrase it is every successful person I've ever

01:07:17.160 met is running towards something just as fast as they're running away from something. And I believe

01:07:23.260 you need that double motivation because it's hard to get where you're going. It doesn't care who you

01:07:27.360 are. It's hard to get where you want to go. And it's one of the reasons like the book art of

01:07:33.800 possible starts with like aligning intrinsic motivators is because it's so hard to get where

01:07:38.820 you want to go. You don't want to get any of the stupid, simple, automatic, biological shit wrong

01:07:43.520 because it's, it's hard even if you get it right. So I, I, I think also I, you know, I wrote a, uh,

01:07:51.600 I wrote a article a couple of years ago now about, uh, small S spite as a motivator. And I love small

01:08:01.480 S spite. I don't think capital S spite. Um, you don't want to use as a motivator. Is it? So there's

01:08:09.520 a, there's a, well, one of my psychology, one of the psychologists who works for me says, you know

01:08:14.480 why you don't want to use capital S spite as a motivator? Cause you end up Michael Jordan. You may be

01:08:20.500 best in the world, but when you're done being best in the world, you're really pissed off and

01:08:24.480 miserable and can't really get back. Right. But I like my wife has a, has a fortune cookie that is

01:08:29.940 attached to our, um, refrigerator that, uh, says I, which she found for me, she's like, this is so you

01:08:36.320 and it says, I get great pleasure out of people proving people wrong. And I mean, I, you have no

01:08:41.640 idea. Like I love that. And I mean, by the way, yeah, you, I mean, like I had a sixth grade teacher

01:08:49.840 who told me I wasn't going to live to see 30. I turned 30. I sent her a postcard.

01:08:55.340 You did really? Oh yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. I was like, I'm 30 the fuck now.

01:09:03.040 Yeah. This is what I'm talking about, man. Yeah. I love small S spite as a motivator,

01:09:08.760 but there, and there's really good data out of the, uh, Harvard adult development project

01:09:13.180 that shows by the way, flat out, like, don't feel yourself on capital S spite because if you

01:09:17.620 can't, by the time you're 50, it's actually a threshold between your late forties and fifties,

01:09:22.520 you haven't forgiven all those people who've done you wrong. You're fucked forward. Like it's,

01:09:27.160 there's these, there's, so there's a, there's a couple of thresholds in adult human development

01:09:31.280 by around 40. If you haven't figured out how to get paid doing something you're, you're really

01:09:35.600 interested in your love and it's lined up, you're sort of screwed afterwards. Like you're really

01:09:40.240 going to quality of life. It's really hard to have a really good quality of life going forward.

01:09:44.820 By 50, you have to have forgiven the people who have done you wrong. There's a great book called,

01:09:50.100 uh, aging well by George for lab, who, uh, was the guy who the Harvard adult development project

01:09:55.500 was a hundred years, 200 year studies, uh, one on Harvard man and the other on like just dudes from

01:10:01.940 Boston. So they had really elite and then they had just normal everyday working less average,

01:10:06.820 average, average people. And so it's all the things they learned over a hundred years. And the study

01:10:10.980 got passed down and down. George is a psychologist who, who had it most recently. And he wrote a great

01:10:16.920 book called aging well and reading it was, it's sort of eyeopening. You're like, Holy crap. I didn't

01:10:22.480 know there were thresholds and things like that. Really interesting. Yeah. I mean, we hear these

01:10:27.880 things as, as, as children, right. And how, how important, for example, it is for, for interaction or,

01:10:33.800 uh, to have a mother and father in the home. We hear about those thresholds for children early on,

01:10:38.080 but you don't hear about that into the forties and fifties. I haven't heard of that before.

01:10:41.580 It's true. It's true. Ryan, I've got, uh, I got to cut out about four minutes, but, uh,

01:10:46.280 I don't know if you have any last questions or anything. I don't, we'll wrap things up. You,

01:10:50.320 you've shared a lot of insight. You've been extremely insightful and valuable for me and

01:10:54.300 the rest of the guys, guys go pick up a copy of the book, the art of impossible. Uh, Steven,

01:10:59.140 just let them know where to go, not only for the book, but just to connect with you and learn

01:11:02.400 more about what you're doing. The art of impossible.com is, uh, is, is the book and,

01:11:08.460 and everything you'd want about that. The book, uh, stevencottler.com is my website. And if you want

01:11:16.400 to learn more about flow, uh, flow research collective.com is where to go. And, uh, yeah,

01:11:24.060 that's, I think that's the list. Perfect. Something I'm forgetting, but you know,

01:11:27.740 if you forgot it, we'll, we'll add it. We'll go in and add it later. Guys, check it out.

01:11:31.500 Steven, you've been instrumental in my growth and development. I'm honored to be able to have

01:11:35.320 this conversation. I want to let you get going because you got things to do, uh, but do appreciate

01:11:39.340 you. And thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.

01:11:43.320 That's really nice. Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with the one and only Steven

01:11:48.040 Kotler. I hope that you enjoyed that one. I certainly did. It was a real pleasure and a privilege and

01:11:53.320 opportunity to be able to talk with him. And he shared some valuable, valuable insight. Uh, as I was

01:11:58.080 getting ready to record this particular episode, I was going through the notes that I took. And I

01:12:02.840 think I took more notes with Steven than probably any guests that I've ever had on, which is saying

01:12:08.620 a lot. Cause I believe we've had 320 or so men join us for conversations on this podcast. Anyways,

01:12:17.060 guys, if you enjoyed it, you want to pick up a copy of the book, the art of impossible. Please do that.

01:12:21.380 Also connect with Steven on the, uh, the socials, a lot of valuable opportunities and lessons to be

01:12:26.600 learned from what he shares. And then connect with me as well. You can do that on Instagram,

01:12:30.860 uh, Twitter, all at, and Facebook at Ryan Mickler, uh, join our email newsletter list that

01:12:37.600 will start going out on a weekly basis, which we have not done up to this point, but we are going

01:12:41.020 to start doing that and, uh, take a look at the iron council, which is our exclusive brotherhood.

01:12:45.600 It's a closed frame system. So, uh, we can have actually those real conversations that

01:12:49.840 we want to have that need to be had, uh, without fear of being banned or dropped or, you know,

01:12:56.080 whatever we see going on in public today. So we're creating solutions. And I think you're

01:13:00.580 going to find a lot of value there. You can check that out at order of man.com slash iron council.

01:13:05.200 All right, guys, I'll be back tomorrow for my ask me anything with Mr. Kip Sorenson.

01:13:09.540 Uh, but until then go out there, take action and become a man you are meant to be.

01:13:13.640 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

01:13:18.260 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - January 19, 2021

STEVEN KOTLER ｜ Making the Impossible Possible

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