Steven Kotler Quotes

It is not often that Death is told so clearly to fuck off.

Tell me what you value and I might believe you,” management guru Peter Drucker once said, “but show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I’ll show you what you really value.” So

Once danger becomes its own reward, risk moves from a threat to be avoided to a challenge to be risen toward.

Every good athlete can find the flow,” continues Pastrana, “but it’s what you do with it that makes you great. If you consistently use that state to do the impossible, you get confident in your ability to do the impossible. You begin to expect it. That’s why we’re seeing so much progression in action sports today. It’s the natural result of a whole lot of people starting to expect the impossible.

happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31 percent, and accuracy on tasks by 19 percent,

When Felix walked off the project,” says Walshe, “it was the darkest moment in his life. But a phobia — that’s deeply rooted fear. To face that, to come back, to trust strangers with his life, to put himself back into position to do something no one else had ever conceived of? I’ve seen plenty of astounding feats of human performance, but emotionally, Felix’s journey is the farthest I’ve ever seen an athlete come.

Emoticons as a new class of oversignifying precision grammar.

El valor, el tema del capítulo 5, es lo que la mayoría de la gente piensa cuando se habla de motivación. Es la persistencia, la determinación y la fortaleza, es decir, la capacidad de continuar con el viaje sin importar las dificultades que se presenten.

Where–if anywhere–do our actual limits lie?

Once, unfortunately, in a crisis situation (as the Greek poet Archilochus pointed out so long ago) we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. Once again, the issue is fear. The more fear in the equation, the fewer options at our disposal. In times of strife, the brain limits our choices to speed up our reaction times. The extreme example being, fight or flight, where the situation is so dire, that the brain gives us only potential actions. Freezing is the third, yet the same thing happens to a lesser degree under any high stress conditions. And the responses we fall back upon under duress, are the ones we fully automatized: those habitual patterns we've executed over and over again.

If you’re interested in being your best, your inner monologue needs to support the best you want to be. In fact, when it comes to sustained performance, because doubt and disappointment are constant companions, controlling your thoughts is often the ball game.

In an environment of turbulent change, as de Geus famously wrote: “The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.

Our facial expressions are hardwired5 into our emotions: we can’t have one without the other. Botox lessens depression because it prevents us from making sad faces. But it also dampens our connection to those around us because we feel empathy by mimicking each other’s facial expressions.

"So I'm heading for Truth or Consequences."

"Aren't we all," says Lorenzo, "aren't we all."

Flow may be the biggest neurochemical cocktail of all. The state appears to blend all six of the brain’s major pleasure chemicals and may be one of the few times you get all six at once. This potent mix explains why people describe flow as their “favorite experience,” while psychologists refer to it as “the source code of intrinsic motivation.