Quotes from Steven Kotler

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." This was a cornerstone finding, replicated and expanded and potent. The idea settled an uneasy corner of the nature/nurture debate: it democratized expertise. Provided the right environment and the proper encouragement, it meant that everyone had a shot at perfection. It meant there were no "chosen few.

The greatest athletes aren't interested in the greatest risks. I mean, sometimes they're taken, sometimes not, but those physical risks are a by-product of a much deeper desire to take creative risks. Don't be fooled by the danger. In action and adventure sports, creativity is always the point.

Sow an action and you reap a habit, sow a habit and you reap a character, sow a character and you reap a destiny.

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 or punished the opposite. Prodigies, it seemed, were made, not born.

Provided the right environment and the proper encouragement, it meant that everyone had a shot at perfection.

When doing what we most love transforms us into the best possible version of ourselves and that version hints at even greater future possibilities, the urge to explore those possibilities becomes feverish compulsion. Intrinsic motivation goes through the roof. Thus flow becomes an alternative path to mastery, sans the misery.

Big-box health clubs oversell memberships by 400 percent

Curiosity into passion; passion into purpose; and purpose into patient profit—that's the safest way to play this game.

as Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson later noted,1 "in all probability . . . hocus pocus is nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus ("this is the body"), [a] ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church.

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.

As William James pointed out, humans are habit machines.

American spirituality has always favored the direct over the inferred, the immediate over the gradual.

Companionship drives focus into the now

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his masterwork, Creativity.

Lots of people believe consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like space and time. If that's the case, then it is turtles all the way down. We'll have this debate about our microbiome. About rocks and atoms and quarks. Until we have Gaia consciousness, there will always be an us-them divide, always a next frontier for empathy.

When deeply religious subjects view sacred iconography or reflect on their notion of God, brain scans reveal hyperactivity in the caudate nucleus, a part of the pleasure system that correlates with feelings of joy, love, and serenity. But Lindstrom and Calvert found that this same brain region lights up when subjects view images associated with strong brands like Ferrari or Apple.

Correct predictions result in understanding. Incorrect predictions result in confusion and prompt you to pay attention.

The Red Ice icon pulses hot pink, just once, then fades to black. And he knows, in the same way the rain knows gravity, Arctic is what he's gotten himself into.

we decided to take Drucker's advice and follow the money. First, we dubbed the amount of cash and coin people spend each year trying to get out of their heads the "Altered States Economy."29 And we didn't mean this metaphorically; we meant it literally. "Getting out of our heads

It's a trick, of course. That thing the neuro-crowd has been doing to music lately, the trigger buried in the rhythm. It fires up the amygdala, a dash of flight-or-flight to create hyper-salience, hippocampal overactivation for enhanced recall, more Big Brother kind of shit. "Direct-to-memory" is how they describe it. Singing in public was his experience.

Theodore Berger, for example, a neural engineer at the University of Southern California, is working on an artificial hippocampus, one of the core neuronal structures implicated in this process. Berger's device records the electrical activity that arises whenever we encode short-term memories — for example, learning to play scales — then translates them into digital signals.

He's a carnivore, thinks Lion, always remember he's a carnivore.

These experiences were profound Ã¢â'¬â€ people were radically different on the other side. Happier, more content, significantly more fulfilled.

Given that seven of the top twenty most-visited sites on the Web are porn sites, and that nearly 33 percent of all Internet searches are for terms related to sex, it's safe to say that we're sinking a ton of time and money into digital voyeurism.