The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance QUOTES

4 " Once danger becomes its own reward, risk moves from a threat to be avoided to a challenge to be risen toward. An entirely new relationship with fear begins to develop. When risk is a challenge, fear becomes a compass — literally pointing people in the direction they need to go next (i.e., the direction that produces more flow). “If you’re interested in mastery,” says University of Cambridge, England, neuropsychologist Barbara Sahakian, “you have to learn this lesson. To really achieve anything, you have to be able to tolerate and enjoy risk. It has to become a challenge to look forward to. In all fields, to make exceptional discoveries you need risk — you’re just never going to have a breakthrough without it. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

5 " Few of Bloom’s research subjects showed any great promise as children. Instead, the one commonality was encouragement, a lot of encouragement. In each case, there was a parent or close relative who rewarded any display of talent, and ignored the opposite. Prodigies, it seemed, were made, not born. As Bloom later told reporters: “We were looking for exceptional kids, but what we found were exceptional conditions. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

6 " Those highlight moments forever seared in your memory: that too is group flow in action. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

7 " The true challenge is how you continue doing it, after you’ve ridden the biggest wave, crossed the longest distance. You set up challenges that are more than what you
ever did before. And by getting through it, you get the sensation you’ve completed something. And if it’s dangerous, then other things that scare you, the experience will strengthen you for those situations. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

8 " A “rich environment” is a combination platter of novelty, unpredictability, and complexity — three elements that catch and hold our attention much like risk. Novelty means both danger and opportunity. To our forbearers, a strange scent in the wind could be prey or predator, but either way it paid to pay attention. Unpredictability means we don’t know what happens next, thus we pay extra attention to what happens next. Complexity, when there’s lots of salient information coming at us at once, does more of the same. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

9 " On the flow path, we are drawn forward by fire; by powerful hedonic instincts; by our deep need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose deeply fulfilled; by dizzyingly feel-good neurochemistry; by a spectrum of joy beyond common ken; by the undeniable presence of our most authentic selves; by a cognitive imperative to make meaning from experience; by the search engine that is evolution and its need for innovation; and by the simplest of truths: life is long and we’re all scared and, in flow, at least for a little while, we’re not. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

10 " Flow is more than an optimal state of consciousness — one where we feel our best and perform our best — it also appears to be the only practical answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Flow is what makes life worth living. “There are moments that stand out from the chaos of the everyday as shining beacons,” wrote Csikszentmihalyi, alongside psychologist Susan Jackson, in Flow in Sports. “In many ways, one might say that the whole effort of humankind through millennia of history has been to capture these fleeting moments of fulfillment and make them part of everyday existence. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

11 " For starters, risk is always relative. While some danger must be courted for flow, confrontations with mortality are not required. In fact, even physical risk itself is optional. A shy man need only cross the room to say hello to an attractive woman to trigger this rush. In casual conversation, merely telling someone the truth can serve the same purpose. “To reach flow,” explains Harvard psychiatrist Ned Hallowell, “one must be willing to take risks. The lover must lay bare his soul and risk rejection and humiliation to enter this state. The athlete must be willing to risk physical harm, even loss of life, to enter this state. The artist must be willing to be scorned and despised by critics and the public and still push on. And the average person — you and me — must be willing to fail, look foolish, and fall flat on our faces should we wish to enter this state. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

12 " Sooner or later, there’s always a Jaws: a mental hurdle we can’t clear, a decision too dangerous to attack head on. In those situations, sideways is forward. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

13 " Yet what appears to be impossible is actually progressive. Behind each of these feats is a litany of small steps: history, technology, training — and not just physical training, mental training as well. Success in these danger-fueled activities requires requires incredible psychological and intellectual talents: grit, fortitude, courage, creativity, resilience, cooperation, critical thinking, pattern recognition, high-speed “hot” decision making — on and on, and all under some of the most extreme conditions imaginable. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

14 " This did not come down to chance or luck. The happiest people on earth worked hard for their fulfillment. They didn’t just have the most peak experiences, they had devoted their lives to having these experiences. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

15 " If we are hunting the highest version of ourselves, then we need to turn work into play and not the other way round. Unless we invert this equation, much of our capacity for intrinsic motivation starts to shut down. We lose touch with our passion and become less than what we could be and that feeling never really goes away. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

16 " And the dark night of flow is an issue that society has not made particularly easy to handle. How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors—activities packed with flow triggers—because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like “career” or “children”? How many, now grown up and done with childish things, have put away the surfboard, the skateboard, the whatever? How many have made the mistake of conflating the value of the vehicle that leads us to an experience (the surfboard, etc.) with the value of the experience itself (the flow state)? "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

17 " When risk is a challenge, fear becomes a compass—literally pointing people in the direction they need to go next "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

18 " To really achieve anything, you have to be able to tolerate and enjoy risk. It has to become a challenge to look forward to. In all fields, to make exceptional discoveries you need risk—you’re just never going to have a breakthrough without it. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

19 " Since flow is a fluid action state, making better decisions isn’t enough: we also have to act on those decisions. The problem is fear, which stands between us and all actions. Yet our fears are grounded in self, time, and space. With our sense of self out of the way we are liberated from doubt and insecurity. With time gone, there is no yesterday to regret or tomorrow to worry about. And when our sense of space disappears, so do physical consequences. But when all three vanish at once, something far more incredible occurs: our fear of death—that most fundamental of all fears—can no longer exist. Simply put: if you’re infinite and atemporal, you cannot die. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

20 " Most people live in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. "

― Steven Kotler , The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance