Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Steven Kotler, Secrets to Peak Performance in Your 30s, 40s, and Beyond | Mental Health | YAPClassic
Fri, 22 Nov 2024
When Steven Kotler was a kid, he was skinny, klutzy, and often the last guy picked for any team or athletic contest. Steven spent a lot of his childhood losing fights to jocks. At 53 years old, he decided to conquer his past shame and push his own aging body past preconceived limits. In this episode, Steven discusses how to navigate peak performance as we age and how to keep our use-it-or-lose-it skills. He will also dispel myths about the aging brain and give insight on how to always stay young and profiting! In this episode, Hala and Steven will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:30) Debunking the "Long Slow Rot" Theory (02:53) Stradivarius and the Myth of Aging (03:59) "Use It or Lose It": The Secret to Preserving Skills (05:59) Learning Park Skiing at 53 (06:59) Why Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks (12:16) Outdoor Challenges That Boost Performance (15:55) Mastering New Skills at Any Age (19:00) Social Connections as an Aging Superpower (23:30) Forgiveness as an Anti-Aging Tool (29:44) Fluid vs. Crystallized Intelligence Explained (33:02) Lessons in Flow from a Dog Sanctuary (36:21) The Power of Cross-Generational Friendships (44:26) Lifelong Learning: The Ultimate Advantage (52:29) What Blue Zones Reveal About Thriving (58:10) Flow State: Aging’s Greatest Ally 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. Steven is the author of several bestselling books. 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. Resources Mentioned: Flow Research Collective Radio: https://www.stevenkotler.com/radio Flow Research Collective: https://www.flowresearchcollective.com/zero-to-dangerous/overview Steven’s Website: https://www.stevenkotler.com/ Sponsored By: Fundrise - Add the Fundrise Flagship Fund to your portfolio in minutes at https://fundrise.com/PROFITING Found - Try Found for FREE at https://found.com/profiting Mint Mobile - To get a new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to https://mintmobile.com/profiting Working Genius - Get 20% off the $25 Working Genius assessment at https://www.workinggenius.com/ with code PROFITING at checkout Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://youngandprofiting.co/shopify Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at https://indeed.com/profiting Teachable - Claim your free month of their Pro paid plan at https://teachable.com/profiting Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Steven’s book, Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad: https://www.amazon.com/Gnar-Country-Growing-Old-Staying/dp/0063272903 LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Productivity, Work-Life Balance, Work Life Balance, Team Building, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Time Management, Life Balance, Goal Setting, Goals, Resolutions
Chapter 1: How can we debunk the 'Long Slow Rot' Theory of Aging?
I know I personally have said it a lot, but is it actually possible to teach an old dog new tricks? How about a really old dog? To answer that question and many others, we're going back to an interview I did in 2023 in episode 211 with the award-winning journalist and human performance expert, Stephen Kotler.
These days, Stephen is a best-selling author and the executive director of the Flow Research Collective. But when he was a kid, Stephen was a skinny, klutzy, and usually the last guy picked for any team. At 53 years old, he decided to conquer his past shame and push his own aging body past preconceived limits.
Chapter 2: What did Stradivarius Teach Us About Aging?
In this episode, Stephen shares how to navigate peak performance as we age and how to keep our use it or lose it skills. He'll also dispel some myths around our aging brain and provide some tips for how we can stay at the top of our game as we enter our 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. So stay right here and listen up. I give you Stephen Kotler.
So Stephen, I'm super looking forward to this conversation. My podcast is called Young and Profiting, but I actually have avid listeners of all ages in their 40s and 50s and beyond. And so I know they'll greatly appreciate this conversation. And to kick it off, I figured we would start with how you got the inspiration to study peak performance.
Chapter 3: How can we preserve our skills as we age?
So I learned that you were really shocked by the story of Antonio Stradivaris. And he's a famous violin maker. And he had an amazing feat of creating two of his most famous violins when he was 92 years old. And this was in the 1700s, way before medical advancements. And so I'd love to understand why his story was so shocking to you.
How did he dispel the typical, you know, thoughts around traditional aging? And how did he inspire you to study peak performance aging?
So, you know, books have a lot of origin stories. There's like 11 different things that come together. I've been working, researching, looking at the field of peak performance for a while in a totally unrelated project, right? I was going to write a mystery novel and I wanted a cat burglar as a character who was going to steal musical instruments.
who made the rarest musical instruments in history, which is Stradivarius. And then I found, figured out what you mentioned, which is he made two of the rarest and most expensive musical instruments in his 90s. And I went, well, wait a minute.
Everything I've been told about physical abilities is like the older myth about aging, which most of us believe, and I believed at the time of this, is what you could call the long, slow rot theory. It's the idea that all of our mental skills and our physical skills, they decline over time, There's nothing we can do to stop the slide.
So included in those physical skills would be fast twitch muscle response, fine motor performance, dexterity, all this stuff you would need to make a violin or a viola in your 90s, along with expertise and wisdom and all that, like cognitive abilities. And it sort of paused me and I was like, well, wait a minute. If this is true, either Stradivarius is like the one in a billion,
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Chapter 4: What role do outdoor challenges play in boosting performance?
Or most of what we've been told about aging is wrong. I had already been looking at other aspects of it, but it really sort of lit a fire under me to really investigate our physical abilities and what happened to them over time. I've been looking at the cognitive stuff for a while. It's very related to flow, how we age. Flow plays a big role there. So this is not new territory to me.
The physical side was like, holy crap, could this possibly be true? And it is true. It's true across the board. Every one of our physical skills are use it or lose it skills. And the research is really clear. We don't stop using these skills, both physical and mental. We can hang on to them, even advance them far, far later into life than anybody thought possible.
I love this. So you're saying the long, slow rot theory basically means that our physical mental skills decline over time. There's nothing that we can really do to stop the slide. That's what inspired you to kind of research this in more detail, understand performance peak aging. And like you just said, you said that use it or lose it skills. We actually have control over them.
We used to think that our physical abilities just decline, but there's a way we can actually keep those skills. So talk to us more about use it or lose it skills. what they are, how we keep them, I guess, healthy.
Yeah. So there's a bunch of stuff on the cognitive side. Let's get back there in a second. On the physical side, there's five main categories that matter. And let me, since a lot of your listeners are younger, let me start here, which is peak performance aging starts young. Like the research is really clear, like interventions in your eighties, even beyond matter, like really matter.
You can, you can really make changes right up to the end and they matter and they're going to have actual big effects. But a lot of this stuff that you want to start working on, you actually want to start working on your twenties and your thirties and You know, this is the biohacking crowd is very aware of this, right? A lot of that crowd is 20s and 30s and they're doing a lot of these things.
Now, I might argue that they're doing some of the wrong stuff because they don't quite understand what peak performance aging is. But besides the point, a lot of this stuff starts young. On the physical side, we want to train five skills that matter most. Strength. stamina, flexibility, agility, and balance. Those are the five skills that you want to train over time. And this is not new knowledge.
Like the World Health Organization knows exactly how many minutes a week we should be training these things. But peak performance aging is 150 to 300 minutes of hard aerobic training a week, moderate to vigorous aerobic training a week, two strength training days a week, and three flexibility, balance, and agility days a week. Or you can find one skill.
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Chapter 5: How does social connection serve as an anti-aging tool?
I chose park skiing in the book that accompanies all that, right? In park skiing, I'm using strength, stamina, balance, agility, flexibility. There's other stuff you want to do. There's ways. We have things called prime mover muscles, our big muscles, and then we have stabilizer muscles like your rotator cuffs or your hip flexors.
Over time, the body gets more efficient and it will start using the prime movers and not use the stabilizer muscles. So if you've been on the couch for a while and you come back to athletics, you're not going to hurt your quad. You're going to tear the stable out. You're going to tear your hip flexor because it stopped doing the work.
Your quad, if you're walking around, your ambulatory is working. Your hip flexor has started to atrophy. So there's ways you want to sort of think about training that's a little bit different if you've been away for a while. But those are the physical skills we need to train over time. On the cognitive side, it's a really long list.
And let me pause there, let you ask another question, then we'll get to the stuff on the cognitive side because we'll spend the next 20 minutes, I'll spend the next 20 minutes talking.
Chapter 6: Why is forgiveness important for aging well?
Yeah, 100%. So on the physical side, why are action sports and what you call dynamic activities so important to help us with these use or lose it skills? Because I think a lot of people who are older, we're used to going to the gym, taking group classes, whatever, but nobody's really thinking about action sports. And you say that they're a great way to leverage these skills.
Okay. We got to get to the full sentence anyway.
So let's go for it.
Just tell me, throw it out there and then we'll break it apart and why it matters so much.
Okay.
So if you want to rock to you drop, if you really are interested in peak performance aging, you need to regularly engage in challenging creative and social activities. That is, you just pointed out that demand dynamic, deliberate play and take place in novel outdoor environments. Now, let's unpack what this big ass sentence and what it means and why it answers your question.
So challenging, social and creative lifelong learning matters for a bunch of different reasons. But short version, if we want to preserve brain function, we need expertise and wisdom. expertise and wisdom are these very diverse neural nets in the brain. Lots of real estate, lots of redundancy, impervious to cognitive decline. The more expertise, the more wisdom.
And this is why one of the reasons performance aging starts young. Like literally the guy who did the core research on wisdom, Elkanan Goldberg, his core advice is the more wisdom, the more expertise, the more we have cognitive reserve. The meaning, the more we can stave off Alzheimer's, dementia,
cognitive decline all the things that are going to happen could happen to the brain over time this is how we fight back and his point was wisdom among the many things encapsulated in wisdom are all like the unconscious rules that govern how do systems work how does behavior work all the like all that stuff it's onboarded slowly over time. So you want to start training these things.
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Chapter 7: What do Blue Zones reveal about thriving through aging?
We have time crunches. We have a whole bunch of other stuff. If you can shift back into that attitude of play, a lot of that motor learning window reopens. So that's just one example. A lot of the skills that we used to think declined over time. We now know their use it or lose it skill, including the skills we need to learn how to park ski. So that was sort of where it came from.
I was an expert skier. I just had never parked. I knew no tricks. I was a big mountain skier. I could go in a straight line very fast, really well. But park skiing is like it's you take it. doing tricks off jumps and on rails and wall rides. It's very acrobatic. It's very dangerous. So it was a totally new adventure for me. There were a lot of reasons to take it up.
There were a lot of advantages about knowing how to park ski later in life was actually what I was after. But it was just a great way to test all this science. And when we learned, and here's what's cool, So I made to, to, to measure progress. I made a list of 20 tracks.
This is zero to like intermediate, intermediate matter, because once you get there, you're sort of like, you take the random shit out of the equation. Like you can control your progress and not have these accidental falls or things that really can get you hurt early on. I figured if it took five years, cool, whatever. Like I didn't care. I started when I was 53.
If it took me to a 60, great, whatever, who cares? I did it in under a season. In fact, I've never learned anything so fast in my entire life. And the cool part was my ski partner, who was your age and was a former professional athlete who got very injured, retired, had a family, had a job, came back to the sport. He used the same methodology and got farther than he's ever gotten before.
We came back the following year. We took 17 older adults, ages 29 to 68. They were intermediate at best, park skiers or skiers and snowboarders. And And we trained them up in four days on the mountain and they got good. But then, because as you pointed out, action sports, not for everyone. So the key thing here is mindset. What am I talking about? Let me tell you what we did.
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Chapter 8: How can we achieve a flow state as we age?
And let me tell you what it was. We then stripped out the action sports. We used weight vest hiking instead. And we put 300 adults, all ages, ages like 30 to 40.
1985, I think, through the same kind of training to see if we could explode their mindset towards aging and get them on what I call the NAR style quest, which is a challenging social and creative activity that demands dynamic, deliberate play and takes place in not a lot of environments. I don't care what it is. I wanted them to just start on a quest that would lead to something that way.
What I really wanted to do was explode the mindset of, oh, I'm too old for this shit. I'm going to get hurt. I got things I want to hold on to. It sets up. It's really weird. Our biology is designed when we're young. Kids, teenagers, young adults, the seeking system sort of drives our behavior. This is exploratory behavior, right? Like, I'm going to go out. I'm going to check out something new.
I'm going to figure out who I am and what I do and how I want to live and how do I want to make a living, all that stuff. This is about dopamine and norepinephrine. Those are very potent, feel-good neurochemicals. They're very addictive. Very, very, very addictive, right? Cocaine is the most widely addictive drug on earth.
All that happens is it causes the brain to release some dopamine and it blocks its reuptake, right? So dopamine is really addictive. When we get stuff that we want to hold on to, oh, I got the right job. I've got the right partner. I've got kids. I've got dogs. I've got a great apartment. I like my bike, whatever it is. We no longer want to be seeking.
We want the stuff that is about conserving what we have, protecting what we have, bonding. So we get endorphins and anandamide and oxytocin. These are like the pro-social neurochemicals that underpin
strong family structures and things like that strong company structures and they're great but we're trading our addictions and what happens is it makes us very very conservative it shuts down the seeking system we get the voice in our head that says hey don't do that you're going to lose what you have the truth of the matter is like old people are literally addicted to the wrong drugs in their bodies you need all of these systems working together
for peak performance aging. And there's a penalty for having a mindset of old. And this is the point. There's a big health and longevity penalty. In fact, when you flip it, when you have a positive mindset towards aging, second half of my life is filled with thrilling and exciting possibilities. My best days are ahead of me. It translates.
And this is one of the most well-established facts in peak performance aging. It will translate into additional seven and a half years of health and longevity. That's huge. That's like quitting smoking huge. In fact, if you're morbidly obese and have a shitty mindset towards aging, change your mindset first.
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