Growing Old, Staying Rad - Steven Kotler

Don't Miss an Episode - Follow on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Some people believe that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Steven Kotler has been studying human performance for thirty years, and has taught hundreds of thousands of people at all skill levels, age groups, and from walks of life, how to achieve peak performance. Discoveries in cognition, flow science, and neuroscience have revolutionized how we think about peak performance aging. To see if theory worked in practice, Kotler conducted his own experiment in applied neuroscience and later-in-life skill acquisition. He set out to try and teach an old dog some new tricks - himself - by taking up a sport deemed impossible to learn at his age. His new book Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad tells the story of his experiment and the cutting-edge research on peak performance aging that he put to the test. His story will change how you think about aging and open to your eyes to why you'll want to jump in and double down on flow activities and lifelong learning. Steven Kotler joins us from New Mexico. _________________________ Bio Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. He is the author of 11 bestsellers (out of fourteen books), including The Art of Impossible, The Future is Faster Than You Think, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Bold and Abundance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 50 languages, and has appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, TIME, and the Harvard Business Review. A lifelong environmentalist and animal rights advocate, Steven is the cofounder of Planet Home, a conference/concert/innovation accelerator focused on solving critical environmental challenges, the cofounder of The Forest + Fire Collective, a network of individuals, organizations and institutions dedicated to ending catastrophic wildfire and restoring forest health to the American West. Alongside his wife, author Joy Nicholson, he is also the co-founder of Rancho de Chihuahua, a hospice care and special needs dog sanctuary. PS: Steven once flew a MIG-17 Russian fighter jet—but that’s a different story. ‍________________________ For More on Steven Kotler Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad Website Flow Research Collective ________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Breaking the Age Code - Dr. Becca Levy The Expectation Effect – David Robson Ready to ROAR? – Michael Clinton The Joy of Movement – Kelly McGonigal _________________________ Wise Quotes On Peak Performance Aging "At the Flow Research Collective, where I'm the Executive Director, we're a peak performance research and training organization. We define peak performance as the following: Peak performance is nothing more or nothing less than getting our biology to work for us rather than against us. And this is, by the way, not a new idea, right? You go back a hundred years to William James, in the very first psychology textbook said the great thing in any education is to make our nervous system our ally and not our enemy. And by nervous system he meant brain and body basically. So it's not a new idea, but that's really what we mean by peak performance. Peak performance aging by extension is getting our biology to work for us rather than against us when applied to the challenges and opportunities the second half of our lives.  Very simple. What I mean by that bigger picture, the old idea about aging, I like to call it the long slow rot theory, right? And I'm sure you guys have talked about a ton on this on this podcast is the idea that all of of our mental skills and all of our physical skills decline over time.