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

Author:Kotler, Steven [Kotler, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: New Harvest
Published: 2014-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

INTERNAL FLOW TRIGGERS

The question raised by Mandy-Rae Cruickshank is fairly straightforward: How did she learn she was capable of extraordinary? Turns out, she didn’t learn how to do anything. Mandy-Rae learned when—when she was capable of extraordinary. This made all the difference.

Mandy-Rae took up an activity that demanded she live in the now. Not metaphorically. Not in some groovy hippie way. Quite simply: 300 feet underwater, there’s no way to be elsewhere. When she says, “It’s really important to not let myself get consumed,” she means, when diving, not thinking about the future (where she could run out of air) or the past (where a poor decision made her use up too much air) is survival. Instead, Cruickshank has trained herself to keep attention right here, right now—which is the only time flow can show up and the only time we’re capable of extraordinary.

Yet the here and now isn’t seen much these days. In our always-on, hyperconnected world, there are endless reasons to be elsewhere. Every time we answer an e-mail or return a text or check our Facebook page, we are there and not here. And just as frequently, we are then and not now. With inboxes piling up, today’s luncheon, tonight’s parent-teacher conference, tomorrow’s deadlines, the report due next week, the performance review right after that, well, no wonder we can’t live in the moment.

Instead, as Douglas Rushkoff writes in Present Shock, “[W]e tend to exist in a distracted present, where forces on the periphery are magnified and those immediately before us are ignored. Our ability to plan—much less follow through on it—is undermined by our need to be able to improvise our way through any number of external impacts that stand to derail us at any moment. Instead of finding a stable foothold in the here and now, we end up reacting to an ever-present assault of simultaneous impulses and commands.”

Not only is the distracted present a miserable place to be, it’s also the worst kind of self-handicapping. Study after study shows that we’re terrible multitaskers. By trying to improve performance by being everywhere and everywhen, we end up nowhere and never. The sad truth is that our lives are pulling us in every direction save the one where we’re most effective.

Worse, as anyone who ever attempted meditation has quickly discovered, changing this tendency is not easy. Using the mind to silence the mind is a long-term endeavor. Tibetan Buddhist meditators—who have arguably self-selected for this ability—can spend over two decades learning to wield it reliably. Yet Mandy-Rae’s ascension didn’t take decades. It didn’t even take years. She went absolute beginner to world record holder in eighteen months, and why? She took a shortcut into the now.

Just as flow states have external triggers, conditions in the outer environment that create more flow, they also have internal triggers, conditions in our inner environment that create more flow. Internal triggers are psychological strategies that drive attention into the now. Back in the 1970s, Csikszentmihalyi identified “clear goals,” “immediate feedback,” and “the challenge/skill ratio” as the three most critical.

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