Steven Kotler: How to Stay Sharp, Strong, and Healthy at Any Age | Mental Health | YAPClassic

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0:01:48 Hey, Yap Gang.
0:01:52 One of the many things I hope listeners of this show have learned over the years is that
0:01:54 aging doesn’t mean slowing down.
0:01:56 It means leveling up.
0:02:01 The key is knowing how to train your brain and body to keep growing, adapting, and performing
0:02:03 at your best, no matter what your age.
0:02:07 After all, we all want to stay young and profiting.
0:02:13 In this Yap Classic episode from 2023, we’re going to revisit my interview with the peak performance
0:02:14 expert, Stephen Kotler.
0:02:20 Stephen is the executive director of the Flow Research Collective, and he spent years figuring
0:02:22 out how to sustain high performance deep into adulthood.
0:02:27 In this conversation, he shared some of his findings about what really works, along with
0:02:33 how deliberate play can supercharge your brain’s performance and the surprising benefits of
0:02:35 cross-generational friendships.
0:02:39 So get ready to rethink everything you know about growing older.
0:02:43 Without further ado, I give you Stephen Kotler.
0:02:48 So Stephen, I’m super looking forward to this conversation.
0:02:53 My podcast is called Young and Profiting, but I actually have avid listeners of all ages in
0:02:54 their 40s and 50s and beyond.
0:02:57 And so I know they’ll greatly appreciate this conversation.
0:03:03 And to kick it off, I figured we would start with how you got the inspiration to study peak
0:03:03 performance.
0:03:08 So I learned that you were really shocked by the story of Antonio Stradivaris.
0:03:13 And he’s a famous violin maker, and he had amazing feat of creating two of his most famous
0:03:15 violins when he was 92 years old.
0:03:18 And this was in the 1700s, way before medical advancements.
0:03:22 And so I’d love to understand why his story was so shocking to you.
0:03:28 How did he dispel the typical, you know, thoughts around traditional aging?
0:03:31 And how did he inspire you to study peak performance aging?
0:03:34 So, you know, books have a lot of origin stories.
0:03:36 There’s like 11 different things that come together.
0:03:41 I’ve been working, researching, looking at the field of peak performance aging for a while
0:03:43 in a totally unrelated project, right?
0:03:47 I was going to write a mystery novel, and I wanted a cat burglar as a character who was
0:03:48 going to steal musical instruments.
0:03:51 Who made the rarest musical instruments in history?
0:03:52 Oh, it’s Stradivarius.
0:03:57 And then I found, figured out what you mentioned, which is he made two of the rarest and most
0:03:59 expensive musical instruments in his 90s.
0:04:01 And I went, well, wait a minute.
0:04:07 Everything I’ve been told about physical abilities is like the older myth about aging, which most
0:04:12 of us believe, and I believed at the time of this, is what you could call the long, slow
0:04:12 rot theory.
0:04:16 It’s the idea that all of our mental skills and our physical skills that decline over time,
0:04:18 there’s nothing we can do to stop the slide.
0:04:25 So included in those physical skills would be fast twitch muscle response, fine motor performance,
0:04:32 dexterity, all this stuff you would need to make a violin or a viola in your 90s, along
0:04:36 with expertise and wisdom and all that, like cognitive abilities.
0:04:39 And it sort of paused me, and I was like, well, wait a minute.
0:04:46 If this is true, either Stradivarius is like the one in a billion, or most of what we’ve been
0:04:47 told about aging is wrong.
0:04:52 I had already been looking at other aspects of it, but really sort of lit a fire under
0:04:56 me to really investigate our physical abilities and what happened to them over time.
0:04:58 I’ve been looking at the cognitive stuff for a while.
0:05:00 It’s very related to flow.
0:05:03 How we age, flow plays a big role there.
0:05:05 So this is not new territory to me.
0:05:09 The physical side was like, holy crap, could this possibly be true?
0:05:11 And it is true.
0:05:11 It’s true across the board.
0:05:15 Every one of our physical skills are use it or lose it skills.
0:05:16 And the research is really clear.
0:05:19 We don’t stop using these skills, both physical and mental.
0:05:24 We can hang on to them, even advance them far, far later into life than anybody thought possible.
0:05:26 I love this.
0:05:31 So you’re saying the long, slow rot theory basically means that our physical, mental skills
0:05:31 decline over time.
0:05:34 There’s nothing that we can really do to stop the slide.
0:05:40 That’s what inspired you to kind of research this in more detail, understand performance,
0:05:40 peak aging.
0:05:44 And like you just said, you said that use it or lose it skills.
0:05:46 We actually have control over them.
0:05:51 We used to think that our physical abilities just decline, but there’s a way we can actually
0:05:52 keep those skills.
0:05:56 So talk to us more about use it or lose it skills, what they are, how we keep them, I guess,
0:05:57 healthy.
0:06:02 Yeah, so there’s a bunch of stuff on the cognitive side.
0:06:03 Let’s get back there in a second.
0:06:07 On the physical side, there’s five main categories that matter.
0:06:14 And let me, since a lot of your listeners are younger, let me start here, which is peak performance
0:06:15 aging starts young.
0:06:22 Like the research is really clear, like interventions in your eighties, even beyond matter, like really
0:06:22 matter.
0:06:26 You can, you can really make changes right up to the end and they matter and they’re going
0:06:28 to have actual big effects.
0:06:32 But a lot of this stuff that you want to start working on, you actually want to start working
0:06:34 on in your twenties and your thirties.
0:06:38 And, you know, this is the biohacking crowd is very aware of this, right?
0:06:41 A lot of that crowd is twenties and thirties in the doing a lot of these things.
0:06:45 Now I might argue that they’re doing some of the wrong stuff because they don’t quite understand
0:06:50 what peak performance aging is, but besides the point, a lot of this stuff starts young
0:06:52 on the physical side.
0:06:59 We want to train five skills that matter most strength, stamina, flexibility, agility, and
0:07:00 balance.
0:07:02 Those are the five skills that you want to train over time.
0:07:04 And this is not new knowledge.
0:07:08 Like the world health organization knows exactly how many minutes a week we should be training
0:07:13 these things, but peak performance aging, it’s 150 to 300 minutes of hard aerobic training
0:07:19 a week, moderate to vigorous aerobic training week, two strength training days a week, and
0:07:22 three flexibility, balance, and agility days a week.
0:07:26 Or you can find one skill.
0:07:30 I chose park skiing in the, in the book that accompanies all that, right?
0:07:36 If I, by in park skiing, I’m using strength, stamina, balance, agility, flexibility.
0:07:37 There’s other stuff you want to do.
0:07:40 There’s ways we have things called prime mover.
0:07:41 Muscle muscles are big muscles.
0:07:45 And then we have stabilizer muscles, like your rotator cuffs, your hip flexors.
0:07:51 Over time, the body gets more efficient and it will start using the prime moves movers and
0:07:53 not use the stabilizer muscles.
0:07:58 So if you’ve been on the couch for a while and you come back to athletics, you’re not going
0:07:59 to hurt your quad.
0:08:01 You’re going to tear the stable out.
0:08:02 You’re going to tear your hip flexor.
0:08:04 Because it stopped doing the work.
0:08:07 Your quad, if you’re walking around, your ambulatory is working.
0:08:09 Your hip flexor has started to atrophy.
0:08:13 So there’s ways you want to sort of think about training that’s a little bit different if you’ve
0:08:14 been away for a while.
0:08:18 But those are the physical skills we need to train over time.
0:08:21 On the cognitive side, it’s a really long list.
0:08:23 And let me pause there.
0:08:24 Let you ask another question.
0:08:27 Then we’ll get to the stuff on the cognitive side because we’ll spend the next 20 minutes.
0:08:29 I’ll spend the next 20 minutes talking.
0:08:30 Yeah, 100%.
0:08:37 So on the physical side, why are action sports and what you call dynamic activities so important
0:08:40 to help us with these user-to-lose-it skills?
0:08:44 Because I think a lot of people who are older, we’re used to going to the gym, taking group
0:08:47 classes, whatever, but nobody’s really thinking about action sports.
0:08:50 And you say that they’re a great way to leverage these skills.
0:08:52 Okay, we got to get to the full sentence anyway.
0:08:53 So let’s…
0:08:54 Go for it.
0:08:54 Just tell me.
0:08:57 Throw it out there and then we’ll break it apart and why it matters so much.
0:08:58 Okay.
0:09:02 So if you want to rock till you drop, if you really are interested in peak performance
0:09:10 aging, you need to regularly engage in challenging, creative, and social activities that is, you’ve
0:09:16 just pointed out, that demand dynamic, deliberate play and take place in novel outdoor environments.
0:09:21 Now let’s unpack what this big ass sentence and what it means and why it answers your question.
0:09:26 So challenging social and creative, lifelong learning matters for a bunch of different
0:09:31 reasons, but short version, if we want to preserve brain function, we need expertise and wisdom.
0:09:37 Expertise and wisdom are these very diverse neural nets in the brain, lots of real estate, lots
0:09:39 of redundancy, impervious to cognitive decline.
0:09:42 The more expertise, the more wisdom.
0:09:44 And this is why one of the reasons peak performance aging starts young.
0:09:51 Like literally the guy who did the core research on wisdom, Elkanon Goldberg, his core advice
0:09:55 is that the more wisdom, the more expertise, the more we have cognitive reserve, the meaning,
0:10:00 the more we can stave off Alzheimer’s, dementia, cognitive decline, all the things that are going
0:10:01 to happen, could happen to the brain over time.
0:10:03 This is how we fight back.
0:10:09 And his point was wisdom among the many things encapsulated in wisdom are all like the unconscious
0:10:14 rules that govern how to systems work, how does behavior work, all the like all that stuff.
0:10:17 It’s onboarded slowly over time.
0:10:19 So you want to start training these things.
0:10:22 You want to start learning, challenging creative and social activities.
0:10:26 We learn a lot during there also tend to drive us into flow.
0:10:29 Social activities are really important as we age.
0:10:33 Most important thing you can do for your brain is maintain social activity because it keeps the
0:10:39 brain active in really important ways and really lowers stress levels.
0:10:43 So a lot of stuff we’re going to be talking about, there are nine known causes of aging.
0:10:44 They’re all linked to inflammation.
0:10:46 Inflammation is linked to stress.
0:10:50 So anything you do that fights stress, that lowers stress, that gives you more emotional
0:10:53 control is involved in peak performance aging.
0:10:57 So social activities, lower stress.
0:10:58 They give us these pro social.
0:11:00 Oh, there’s people around who love me, got my back.
0:11:01 I can be a little less stressed.
0:11:03 So there’s a lot of that stuff.
0:11:06 Dynamic, deliberate play is the next bit.
0:11:08 Dynamic is literally what we’ve been talking about.
0:11:12 It’s just a fancy way of saying it’s all five categories of functional fitness, strength,
0:11:15 stamina, flexibility, balance, agility, deliberate play.
0:11:17 You’ve heard of deliberate practice.
0:11:23 Anders Ericsson’s favorite expertise, repetition with incremental advancement is the fastest path
0:11:24 for his expertise.
0:11:30 And Anders wasn’t wrong, but as he himself said, that’s only true in certain very precise disciplines.
0:11:36 And when faced with just general learning, deliberate play works better than deliberate
0:11:36 practice.
0:11:39 Deliberate play is repetition with improvisation.
0:11:42 You’re going to do the same thing you did last time, but a little bit of flourish, a little
0:11:44 flower, a little something fun.
0:11:46 It’s playful, meaning there’s no shame.
0:11:47 There’s no embarrassment.
0:11:48 If you’re bad, who cares?
0:11:49 You’re having fun.
0:11:54 But that feeling of play produces more neurochemistry, more endorphins.
0:11:59 This one really boosts the immune system, lowers stress levels, but amplifies learning.
0:12:05 So dynamic, deliberate play says I’m using all the physical skills that decline and I’m
0:12:07 learning better than any other way.
0:12:10 Novel outdoor environments, the last bit.
0:12:11 Why do we care?
0:12:12 And this is back.
0:12:14 Action sports demand dynamic, deliberate play.
0:12:18 They take place in novel outdoor environments and they’re challenging, creative, and social.
0:12:19 So one stop shopping.
0:12:22 The last bit is most important bit.
0:12:25 One, outdoor environments in general, lower stress.
0:12:26 We know this.
0:12:28 This is well established in positive psychology.
0:12:32 A 20 minute walk in the woods will outperform most SSRIs for treatment of depression.
0:12:36 I can talk about why if you care, but like we know that good for you lowers stress.
0:12:40 So in itself, being in nature is anti-inflammatory.
0:12:42 So it’s better for healthy aging.
0:12:46 But if you want to preserve brain function, how do you do that?
0:12:50 You want to birth new neurons and turn those new neurons into neural nets.
0:12:52 That’s learning.
0:12:57 So the adult brain, contrary to what we used to believe for a long time, it actually does
0:12:58 continue to birth new neurons.
0:13:02 And in fact, the adult brain will birth about 700 new neurons a day.
0:13:04 Even basically until you die.
0:13:07 But where do those neurons show up is the key question.
0:13:09 They show up in a part of the brain known as the hippocampus.
0:13:11 The hippocampus does two things.
0:13:14 It does long-term memory and it does location, place.
0:13:17 It’s packed with place cells and grid cells.
0:13:17 Why?
0:13:19 We evolved as hunter-gatherers.
0:13:23 When you were in the wild and something emotionally charged happened, you got to remember where
0:13:24 you were when it happened.
0:13:25 That’s survival.
0:13:28 So where did I get attacked by that tiger so I don’t go back there?
0:13:30 Where was that ripe fruit tree?
0:13:32 So when it comes into season, I’m hungry.
0:13:32 I can go there.
0:13:34 This is survival.
0:13:36 This is what the brain is designed to do.
0:13:41 Peak performance and peak performance aging is always getting our biology to work for us
0:13:42 rather than against us.
0:13:48 Our biology is designed to remember when we have novel experiences and outdoor environments.
0:13:51 So that’s what you want to use it for.
0:13:52 Action sports gives you that.
0:13:57 Now, I also say in the book that like if action sports aren’t your thing, you can duplicate
0:13:59 a lot of this by simply hiking with a weight vest.
0:14:05 And weight vests are really key, better than a lot of other things because they amplify bone
0:14:05 density.
0:14:12 Little known fact, your bones, like where you store all your minerals, all your nutrients
0:14:14 are stored in your bones and they’re released.
0:14:18 So everything that drives the brain, calcium, for example, which isn’t everything the brain
0:14:20 does, it’s stored in the bones.
0:14:26 So as our bones become less dense over time, which happens, it impacts everything.
0:14:31 For women, really important after menopause, where does most of your estrogen come from?
0:14:32 Your bones.
0:14:38 So wildly fluctuating hormonal levels, which is a problem that most people have post-menopause,
0:14:40 exacerbated by bone density.
0:14:43 If you want to increase bone density, one of the best ways is hiking with a weight vest.
0:14:44 There’s lots of literature.
0:14:46 There’s lots of science on that.
0:14:49 There’s also a bunch of other benefits, but it hits all of those categories.
0:14:55 If you’re not interested in action sports, that said, there’s a lot to recommend in action
0:15:01 sports, especially a lot of in our country is about a new way of approaching these difficult,
0:15:06 challenging physical activities late in life that’s much safer and much more well-suited
0:15:07 to progression.
0:15:13 Yeah, because I have to say, like, I’m in my 30s and I used to ski and I don’t even ski
0:15:15 anymore because I’m like, I’ve got too much to live for.
0:15:16 I don’t want to break a bone.
0:15:17 I’m not into it.
0:15:22 So I totally love that you’re giving another option in terms of the weighted vest and hiking.
0:15:26 So in your book, you actually took on park skiing.
0:15:32 And this is something that people used to believe that anybody over 35, like really couldn’t learn.
0:15:38 So talk to us about learning that activity at 53 years old and what you learned as an old
0:15:40 dog learning new tricks.
0:15:45 So there’s a couple of things you need to know to flesh this out a little bit, but you
0:15:45 are right.
0:15:46 Everything you said is totally true.
0:15:48 Why did I think I could learn to park ski?
0:15:54 There’s a whole bunch of new stuff in like flow science, my field and body cognition, a
0:15:57 couple other whiz bang fields that I was like, you know, if these things are right, it should
0:16:01 be totally possible for older adults to be able to learn really, really difficult skills.
0:16:04 I’ll give you like one random example.
0:16:06 We have a motor learning window.
0:16:11 Like Beverly says, don’t become a gymnast or a ballet dancer after 25, right?
0:16:15 Because that window’s closed and you can’t just, that’s sort of true.
0:16:17 There is like, like a lot of things in big performance aging.
0:16:23 It’s true, but, and here’s the but, what really changes is not our ability to learn.
0:16:24 It’s how we learn.
0:16:27 When we’re kids, we play.
0:16:29 When we’re adults, we have shame.
0:16:30 We have embarrassment.
0:16:32 We have time crunches.
0:16:32 We have stress.
0:16:34 We have a whole bunch of other stuff.
0:16:40 If you can shift back into that attitude of play, a lot of that motor learning window reopens.
0:16:43 So that’s just one example.
0:16:46 A lot of the skills that we used to think declined over time.
0:16:50 We now know they’re used to lose it skills, including the skills we need to learn how to
0:16:50 park ski.
0:16:53 So that was sort of where it came from.
0:16:55 I was an expert skier.
0:16:57 I just had never park skied.
0:16:58 I knew no tricks, right?
0:16:59 I was a big mountain skier.
0:17:03 I could go in a straight line very fast, really well.
0:17:07 But park skiing is like, it’s, you take, it’s doing tricks off jumps and on rails and wall
0:17:07 rides.
0:17:08 It’s very acrobatic.
0:17:09 It’s very dangerous.
0:17:13 So it was a, it was a totally not a new adventure for me.
0:17:17 There were a lot of reasons to take it up.
0:17:21 There’s, there were a lot of advantages about like knowing how to park ski later in life was,
0:17:23 was actually that what I was after.
0:17:28 But it was just a great way to test all this science and, and what we learned and here’s
0:17:28 what’s cool.
0:17:31 So I made it to, to, to measure progress.
0:17:32 I made a list of 20 tracks.
0:17:36 This is zero to like intermediate intermediate matter, because once you get there, you’re
0:17:39 sort of like, you take the random shit out of the equation.
0:17:44 Like you can control your progress and not have these accidental falls or things that
0:17:46 really can get you hurt early on.
0:17:49 I figured if it took five years, cool, whatever.
0:17:50 Like I didn’t care.
0:17:51 I started when I was 53.
0:17:53 If it took me to a 60, great, whatever, who cares?
0:17:55 I did it in under a season.
0:17:57 In fact, I’ve never learned anything so fast in my entire life.
0:18:02 And the cool part was my ski partner, who was your age and was a former professional
0:18:07 athlete who got very injured, retired, had a family, had a job, came back.
0:18:12 This sport, he used the same methodology and got farther than he’s ever gotten before.
0:18:14 We came back the following year.
0:18:18 We took 17 older adults, ages 29 to 68.
0:18:23 They were intermediate at best park skiers or skiers and snowboarders.
0:18:29 And we trained them up in four days on the mountain and they got good.
0:18:32 But then, because as you pointed out, action sports, not for everyone.
0:18:36 So the key thing here is mindset.
0:18:37 What am I talking about?
0:18:38 Let me tell you what we did.
0:18:39 And let me tell you what it was.
0:18:41 We then stripped out the action sports.
0:18:43 We used weight vest hiking instead.
0:18:53 And we put 300 adults, all ages, ages like 30 to 85, I think, through the same kind of training
0:18:59 to see if we could explode their mindset towards aging and get them on what I call the NAR style
0:19:05 quest, which is a challenging social and creative activity that demands dynamic, deliberate
0:19:07 playing takes place in not a lot of our environments.
0:19:08 I don’t care what it is.
0:19:12 I wanted them to just start on a quest that would lead to something that way.
0:19:17 What I really wanted to do was explode the mindset of all, oh, I’m too old for this shit.
0:19:18 I’m going to get hurt.
0:19:19 I got things I want to hold on to.
0:19:21 It sets up.
0:19:22 It’s really weird.
0:19:25 Our biology is designed when we’re young.
0:19:27 Kids, teenagers, young adults.
0:19:30 The seeking system sort of drives our behavior.
0:19:32 This is exploratory behavior, right?
0:19:33 Like, I’m going to go out.
0:19:34 I’m going to check out something new.
0:19:37 I’m going to figure out who I am and what I do and how I want to live and how do I want
0:19:38 to make a living, all that stuff.
0:19:40 This is about dopamine and norepinephrine.
0:19:42 Those are very potent, feel-good neurochemicals.
0:19:43 They’re very addictive.
0:19:45 Very, very, very addictive, right?
0:19:48 Cocaine’s the most widely addictive drug on earth.
0:19:52 All that happens is it causes the brain to release some dopamine and it blocks its reuptake, right?
0:19:54 So dopamine is really addictive.
0:19:59 When we get stuff that we want to hold on to, oh, I got the right job.
0:20:00 I’ve got the right partner.
0:20:01 I’ve got kids.
0:20:02 I’ve got dogs.
0:20:04 I’ve got a great apartment.
0:20:05 I like my bike.
0:20:08 Whatever it is, we no longer want to be seeking.
0:20:13 We want the stuff that is about conserving what we have, protecting what we have, bonding.
0:20:18 So we get endorphins and anandamide and oxytocin.
0:20:22 These are like the pro-social neurochemicals that underpin strong family structures and things
0:20:24 like that, strong company structures.
0:20:26 And they’re great, but we’re trading our addictions.
0:20:29 And what happens is it makes us very, very conservative.
0:20:32 It shuts down the seeking system.
0:20:34 We get the voice in our head that says, hey, don’t do that.
0:20:36 You’re going to lose what you have.
0:20:40 The truth of the matter is like old people are literally addicted to the wrong drugs in
0:20:40 their bodies.
0:20:44 You need all of these systems working together for big performance aging.
0:20:46 And there’s a penalty for having a mindset of old.
0:20:47 And this is the point.
0:20:50 There’s a big health and longevity penalty.
0:20:53 In fact, when you flip it, when you have a positive mindset towards aging, second half
0:20:56 of my life is filled with thrilling and exciting possibilities.
0:20:57 My best days are ahead of me.
0:20:58 It translates.
0:21:02 And this is one of the most well-established facts in peak performance aging.
0:21:06 It will translate into an additional seven and a half years of health and longevity.
0:21:08 That’s huge.
0:21:10 That’s like quitting smoking huge.
0:21:17 In fact, if you’re morbidly obese and have a shitty mindset towards aging, change your mindset
0:21:18 first.
0:21:23 It actually have a bigger effect on your life and your health and your longevity than losing
0:21:23 weight.
0:21:25 So it’s really, really important.
0:21:27 It’s where peak performance aging starts.
0:21:32 And one of the reasons that peak performance aging starts young is if you never develop
0:21:35 this mindset, this isn’t going to be a problem.
0:21:36 Like you’re not going to have to overcome it.
0:21:43 One of the reasons the NAR style adventure is so useful for older adults is like for me,
0:21:45 it didn’t matter what I wanted to believe about aging.
0:21:50 Once I got out on the mountain, I was learning how to do 360s and nose butter 360s and 180s and
0:21:54 all the other stuff I learned, like it just blew up all my limiting beliefs about what
0:21:55 was possible in the future.
0:21:59 Because I have just onboarded the most difficult physical thing I’ve ever done in my life.
0:22:00 And I did it at 53.
0:22:03 And I’ve done a lot of difficult physical things along the way.
0:22:04 This was definitely the hardest.
0:22:05 And I did it.
0:22:09 And I’m still at the park skiing at 55 now because I wrote books a couple of years old
0:22:11 in terms of when I wrote it.
0:22:15 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:27:33 That’s amazing.
0:27:40 I have to say it’s very inspiring and I can feel your enthusiasm from the camera and sort of like your vigor for life.
0:27:47 And so it’s really positive that you’re spreading this message in terms of how people can basically stay young at heart forever.
0:27:54 And like you said, it’s totally in your control if you put yourselves in situations where you’re activating your brain in certain ways,
0:27:59 you’re playing, you’re dispelling any sort of internal beliefs that you have about your own abilities,
0:28:05 but actually going out and doing these physical things in turn, it’s helping improve your cognitive performance.
0:28:07 Just amazing, really cool stuff.
0:28:09 And nobody has talked about this on the podcast yet.
0:28:10 So it’s very exciting.
0:28:16 So sticking on this point of mindset, I’d love to talk about this concept of dirty old shame.
0:28:21 I know that you had to get over some internal traumas.
0:28:25 From my understanding, when you were growing up, you weren’t always this sporty.
0:28:28 You were sort of the last kid picked on the team at school.
0:28:35 And you mentioned in your book that part of you kind of overcoming and taking on this challenge was you getting over these past traumas.
0:28:38 So talk to us about that and how we need to do that as well.
0:28:41 So another reason peak performance aging sort of starts young.
0:28:43 First, we start with the good news.
0:28:49 One of the reasons old dogs can learn new tricks that we haven’t talked about yet is as we enter our 50s,
0:28:55 it’s really in our late 40s, there are a bunch of really profound changes in how the brain processes information.
0:28:57 One, certain genes only turn on with experience.
0:29:00 They’ll only flip these switches later in life.
0:29:06 Two, in our 50s, the two hemispheres of the brain, which essentially function in opposition to each other along the way,
0:29:08 they start working together like never before.
0:29:13 And finally, the brain starts to recruit underutilized resources in our 50s.
0:29:19 So as a result, we gain access to whole new levels of intelligence, creativity, empathy, and wisdom.
0:29:22 And I go on and on and on about those benefits.
0:29:26 There’s a lot that comes with that, but these are not guaranteed.
0:29:32 So psychologists talk about moderators, the technical term, it’s an if-then condition.
0:29:34 You get this only if you do this, right?
0:29:42 And if you want the access to these cognitive superpowers in our 50s, and we’ll come back to it,
0:29:47 but from a profit perspective, we really want to talk about those superpowers in a second.
0:29:48 Let me finish this point.
0:29:53 There are a number of gateways of adult development that you have to pass through.
0:29:59 So by the age, age 30, you sort of, if you really just want to enjoy and kick ass beyond 30,
0:30:04 you have to have solved the crisis of identity, which sort of shows up around age 12.
0:30:07 And Erickson thought he used to disappear at 18.
0:30:09 It doesn’t, but it does.
0:30:11 If you haven’t solved it by 30, you have a problem.
0:30:16 The reason is by 40, you need match fit.
0:30:18 Match fit is an economics term.
0:30:22 It means there’s a tight link between who I am and what I do in the world, right?
0:30:27 So if you don’t know who you are, you can’t get match fit because there’s no,
0:30:29 if you don’t know your strengths, your values, all that stuff.
0:30:34 So that has to be by 30, by 40, we need to be, we have match fit.
0:30:36 And then by 50, we need forgiveness.
0:30:40 We got to forgive ourselves for like past embarrassments and past shames.
0:30:42 And we got to forgive those who have done us harm.
0:30:47 And as you pointed out, I spent most of my childhood losing fights to jocks.
0:30:48 I was a punk rocker.
0:30:50 The jocks didn’t like us.
0:30:51 I didn’t like them.
0:30:53 And this was back in, you know, in the seventies and eighties.
0:30:57 And like, you got to understand, like cars of football players would pull up on the side
0:31:01 of the road and they’d see a guy with a mohawk and they’d jump out to beat you up.
0:31:03 And it was like five against one always.
0:31:06 And it was not a great situation.
0:31:11 So I had a lot of anger and I knew peak performance aging.
0:31:13 You got to put that shit down.
0:31:14 You cannot thrive in your fifties.
0:31:19 You don’t get these superpowers, which is why old dogs can learn new tricks better than young
0:31:19 dogs.
0:31:24 One of the reasons I learned park skiing so fast is I have more intelligence.
0:31:26 I’ve got more creativity.
0:31:28 I’ve got the stuff I need.
0:31:33 And they’ve got even more wisdom, which means I can keep myself safer than when I was making
0:31:35 better decisions along the way.
0:31:39 That stuff is great, but I don’t get it if I can’t forgive those who have done me wrong.
0:31:45 So the standard best way to do that, and there’s tons of research, is love and kindness meditation
0:31:46 and passion meditation.
0:31:48 It’s an incredibly potent tool.
0:31:51 It’s amazing for a ton of different stuff.
0:31:56 It’s been studied for probably longer than any other meditation style.
0:32:02 We understand all the neuroscience, but when it came to people who I got in fistfights with
0:32:05 and worse for 10 years, it wasn’t enough.
0:32:08 I could like all the love and kindness meditation of the world.
0:32:11 Like I could forgive a lot of stuff and clean out a lot.
0:32:15 I was left with like, it just like wasn’t going away.
0:32:20 So I decided one of the reasons I took on an incredibly difficult physical jockey challenge
0:32:24 is, okay, I’m going to go like, this is my problem.
0:32:26 Let’s go walk a mile in their moccasins, right?
0:32:28 Let’s take this on.
0:32:30 And it turns out it worked.
0:32:32 By the way, I didn’t think it was going to work.
0:32:35 I just knew I needed to do this to thrive.
0:32:37 And I was like, well, I’m out of any other ideas.
0:32:41 Loving kindness meditation, which is what everybody, right, is not getting.
0:32:44 And there’s still anger there.
0:32:45 There’s still resentment there.
0:32:47 There’s still, there’s still stuff there.
0:32:52 So let me see if taking on this kind of putting myself on a physical mission could clear that
0:32:53 out.
0:32:54 And it did.
0:32:58 And, you know, the story is sort of in the end of the book and I won’t, I won’t sort
0:33:00 of ruin it as spoiler alert, right?
0:33:02 I’d be giving away sort of that, that one.
0:33:06 And I’m not going to, but it was one of the neater things that happened along the way as
0:33:11 I got to put down like a bunch of sort of shame and embarrassment and like stuff.
0:33:15 I’ve carried since I was probably 10 or 12, definitely 12.
0:33:17 That’s amazing.
0:33:21 Do you feel like much lighter now and that you just can approach things differently?
0:33:26 Like how did it, how did that impact you getting over that trauma like that after so many years
0:33:28 of having the same issue?
0:33:34 I always say that one of the myths that I think a lot of people have about their life
0:33:36 is that people think it’s going to get easier.
0:33:38 Like you think, oh, I’m going to get older.
0:33:39 I’m going to get better at this.
0:33:43 I’m going to be able to sort of like, oh, I know exactly what I like and I can manicure my
0:33:44 life.
0:33:47 And it just doesn’t get easier.
0:33:48 It just doesn’t.
0:33:55 What it gets is more meaningful and more in like life satisfaction, overall wellbeing.
0:33:58 And that’s what this really impacted.
0:34:03 Somehow like it made life more meaningful, like in those, in those ways.
0:34:04 Like, I don’t know.
0:34:11 I, do I feel lighter perhaps, but what it, it just sort of, it closed that loop.
0:34:11 You know what I mean?
0:34:14 Like, okay, done check.
0:34:15 I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
0:34:21 And literally what it really does is when certain memories just like pop into my head,
0:34:23 now they just last a half second.
0:34:25 And I’m like, oh yeah, there’s that thing.
0:34:26 And it goes away.
0:34:30 Whereas before, no, I could start to think on it and dwell on it.
0:34:31 And then I’d have a problem.
0:34:31 Yeah.
0:34:34 Have you ever heard of Arthur Brooks?
0:34:35 I think so.
0:34:37 He’s somebody that I think you should definitely look into.
0:34:42 So I had Arthur Brooks on the podcast in 2021, sorry, 2022.
0:34:44 And he was like one of my favorite interviews.
0:34:47 And he wrote this book called Cracking the Code to Happiness.
0:34:49 He’s a Harvard professor, social scientist.
0:34:54 And basically he talks about how your brain biologically is different before 40 and after
0:34:54 40.
0:34:58 And he talks about fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence.
0:35:04 And so this was like a big conversation that we had on the podcast and something that
0:35:05 made us think a lot.
0:35:07 I had a lot of feedback from my listeners.
0:35:12 And I feel like what you say is pretty different from what he says.
0:35:13 There are some similarities.
0:35:17 But basically what he’s saying is that you have a biological clock ticking, your ability
0:35:22 to reason, think flexibly, learn new things, problem solve, be innovative.
0:35:24 That starts to decline in your 40s and 50s.
0:35:26 And that doesn’t mean that your brain starts to go bad.
0:35:30 You just start to have crystallized intelligence or you accumulate knowledge, facts, skills, and
0:35:34 you can use that throughout your career as a way to teach other people.
0:35:38 And essentially what he’s saying is like, you’ve got to like be ready for the second
0:35:42 half of your career and not miss that and be like trying to chase your younger self and
0:35:44 your younger brain, essentially.
0:35:46 So for example, the professional athlete becomes the coach.
0:35:49 The star litigator becomes a partner.
0:35:51 The singer becomes an A&R exec.
0:35:56 And you’re basically teaching younger people your knowledge and taking on that second wave
0:35:57 of your career.
0:36:01 So he is right and he is wrong, as far as I could tell.
0:36:09 Where he’s really right is passing along knowledge is absolutely key to peak performance aging.
0:36:10 It’s key to…
0:36:14 In fact, the societies where people age the best, two things are very true.
0:36:18 One, they don’t have negative stereotypes towards aging.
0:36:23 So ageism is the most common and socially accepted stereotype in the world.
0:36:27 I go out in the public these days with any stereotype, somebody’s going to punch me in
0:36:30 the mouth and cancel me, except for ageism.
0:36:32 Ageism, you can…
0:36:34 People are like, oh, you’re too old to do that shit.
0:36:36 Like we geezer each other right in the…
0:36:37 And it’s crazy.
0:36:42 Becca Levy at Yale has done tons of work on ageism and the stereotype of aging.
0:36:43 And it’s incredibly detrimental.
0:36:51 In fact, you could go so far as literally we are killing older adults with how we talk
0:36:51 about them.
0:36:53 So that is really, really clear.
0:36:58 The societies where there’s no ageism, there’s also cross-generational friendships.
0:37:01 So the old are passing along knowledge.
0:37:03 This is a natural part of brain development.
0:37:06 Now, you have to put things into categories.
0:37:08 He is not wrong.
0:37:11 We do shift from fluid intelligence into crystallized intelligence.
0:37:13 That transition does happen.
0:37:18 But, but, but, but, but a bunch of the skills that we thought declined over time, like the
0:37:21 fluid intelligence skills that we thought went away.
0:37:23 No, it turns out that’s not true at all.
0:37:27 We get actually new levels of intelligence and creativity in our 50s.
0:37:29 So that’s not actually true.
0:37:30 There’s certain things.
0:37:37 The article I like best, Martin Seligman from Penn and Scott Barry Kaufman wrote a great
0:37:42 article on creativity over time where they talk about what goes away from creativity and what
0:37:44 stays or comes on.
0:37:48 And the list of like what comes on and stays is much longer than what goes away.
0:37:50 Now, there’s stuff that does go away.
0:37:53 So the question you’ve got to now ask, is it permanent?
0:37:55 Is this real?
0:37:57 Or have we just not figured out how to train it?
0:37:58 So let me give you an example.
0:38:00 Adam Ghazali is a friend of mine.
0:38:01 He’s on my board.
0:38:03 We do a lot of research together.
0:38:09 He’s at UCSF and he had these neuroscientists, you know, the cover of nature a bunch of years
0:38:11 ago for a video game he designed.
0:38:14 It’s the very first video game to be approved by the FDA.
0:38:16 It treats cognitive decline in older adults.
0:38:19 And what it specifically focuses on is task switching.
0:38:25 If you go back to fluid intelligence, one of the things that declines over time is task
0:38:27 switching, our ability to focus on this and then focus on this.
0:38:29 And that’s a real problem.
0:38:32 He’s got a video game that will take your brain.
0:38:38 If you’re 60, you play it literally, I think it’s three hours a week or three 20 minute sessions
0:38:41 a week for six weeks is the standard doctor prescription for this video game.
0:38:44 And it will reset your 60 year old brain back to 20.
0:38:49 So there’s a bunch of stuff like that where it’s use it or lose it.
0:38:51 We just have to figure out how do you train it up?
0:38:54 The other side of it is.
0:38:57 So let’s talk about the other weird one of the things he said.
0:39:03 One of the reasons we, our brain performance declines over time is white matter density
0:39:06 decreases over time and we lose certain neurochemicals.
0:39:11 So what he’s not telling you is, well, you can replace those neurochemicals.
0:39:15 In fact, SSRIs, which actually suck for depression, turn out to be great for older adults.
0:39:21 Low level SSRIs because serotonin levels decline over time and SSRIs can boost them.
0:39:23 If you don’t want to take a drug, hike with a weight vest.
0:39:26 Most of your serotonin is manufactured in your bones.
0:39:31 And one of the reasons the brain has less is because you’re making less in your bones.
0:39:34 And if you increase bone density, you get the serotonin back.
0:39:35 You get a bunch of those neurochemicals back.
0:39:40 The general thinking is sort of true, but a lot of those skills are use it or lose it.
0:39:45 And either we’ve already figured out how to fix them or this stuff is also progressing really,
0:39:46 really, really quickly.
0:39:52 The whole other side of this is regenerative medicine, longevity, science, all that stuff
0:39:55 is moving at exponential rates.
0:40:03 So for example, five years ago, we could not deal with most tendon, bone, and ligament problems.
0:40:10 Today, there’s very little you can do to tendons, bones, or ligaments that exosomes, stem cells,
0:40:11 certain other things.
0:40:13 Like we are good at that stuff now.
0:40:15 It’s advanced really far.
0:40:20 Now, if anybody is making you promises about stem cells that go like beyond bones, ligaments,
0:40:24 and tendons, no, no, they’re lying and they’re exaggerating what’s real right now.
0:40:28 But up to that point, no, no, we’ve sort of got to dial.
0:40:33 So technology is advancing and it’s going to solve a lot of those issues.
0:40:37 A lot of those issues are not what we thought they were.
0:40:41 And you can train a lot of that stuff in unusual ways.
0:40:43 We’re just figuring out.
0:40:47 And some of the early ways, like all the brain games, they’re worthless.
0:40:48 They’re totally worthless.
0:40:51 They train nothing other than the ability to play that game.
0:40:55 That’s not how this works.
0:40:59 But learning a foreign language, learning to play a musical instrument, learning a challenging,
0:41:02 dynamic activity, like all that stuff.
0:41:04 No, no, that’s the real medicine.
0:41:06 And that really actually does work.
0:41:06 Yeah.
0:41:11 I love what you’re saying because I remember leaving that conversation with Arthur Brooks,
0:41:13 although it was really enlightening and he said a lot of smart things.
0:41:14 I felt depressed.
0:41:19 I was like, oh, man, I got like, you know, less than 10 years to figure like to do all my innovative
0:41:20 stuff.
0:41:23 And it’s good to know what you’re saying, that we are actually in control.
0:41:27 Like, of course, you can be passive and the inevitable will happen with your cognitive decline.
0:41:33 But if we’re proactive and kind of fight that natural tendency that’s going to happen, plus
0:41:38 with modern medicine, like you said, there’s a lot that we can do to slow it down, reverse
0:41:38 it.
0:41:39 So that’s amazing.
0:41:43 So let’s dig deep on these three types of thinking.
0:41:48 You alluded to them at a high level that we get better at as we’re 50 and beyond.
0:41:53 So you say it’s relativistic thinking, non-dualistic thinking and systematic thinking.
0:41:54 Yeah.
0:41:59 So short version, our ego quiets down and our perspective widens.
0:42:03 So essentially, we learn to see things from multiple perspectives.
0:42:08 We learn that there are very few black and white truths and most things are gray.
0:42:11 That’s relativistic thinking and probabilistic thinking.
0:42:15 And then the last category, we learn to see the forest through the trees.
0:42:21 We learn to get good, better at systems thinking and seeing the big picture.
0:42:27 And because of these skills, this is where that extra intelligence, creativity, empathy,
0:42:29 and wisdom comes from and builds out of this intelligence.
0:42:32 There’s a huge business opportunity here.
0:42:35 And nobody’s paying attention to it.
0:42:41 So that little backstory, when I wrote Bold, which is a book about entrepreneurship and people
0:42:46 like Larry Page and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and how to really use exponential technology
0:42:51 and some human capability flow science stuff to really level up organizations, I spent so
0:42:53 much years talking to CEOs.
0:42:58 And a lot of the time, in a lot of those discussions, we would talk about hiring.
0:42:59 Who are the ideal employees?
0:43:00 How do you find them?
0:43:02 What do you need for the 21st century?
0:43:08 And over and over again, thousands of times, I heard the same two things from CEOs.
0:43:14 I need employees who are really intelligent and really creative and really innovative
0:43:18 because the rate of change is really fast and I got to keep pace and stay ahead of it.
0:43:20 Otherwise, I don’t have a company.
0:43:20 I don’t have a business.
0:43:21 I can’t do any of that.
0:43:28 The other thing I need is I need employees who are empathetic and wise because if I don’t
0:43:30 have psychological safety, nobody can do their job.
0:43:33 If I don’t have psychological safety, I don’t have great team performance.
0:43:35 That team performance, you can’t be a company.
0:43:37 You can’t do those things without empathy and wisdom.
0:43:43 Most importantly, the mantra of 21st century business, and maybe we thank Jeff Bezos for this,
0:43:45 but it’s always been it’s customer-centric thinking.
0:43:51 And if you’re not empathetic or you’re not wise, nobody’s thinking like a customer at
0:43:51 all.
0:43:58 So it turns out a well-trained 50-year-old and well-trained is key, right?
0:43:59 There’s a whole bunch.
0:44:01 We have like, you want those gateways of adult development.
0:44:02 I’ve turned about these.
0:44:04 It should be a hiring checklist.
0:44:07 And in your 50s, you want access to these superpowers.
0:44:12 You need to engage in creative activities that sort of unlocks these new thinking styles.
0:44:15 That’s another reason why challenging creative and social activities matter.
0:44:21 And you need to fight off risk aversion and train down physical fragility.
0:44:25 Because if your body is rotting, what good is all this new mental skills?
0:44:26 You can’t use it.
0:44:31 And risk aversion, which increases over time, this is why challenging activities matter so
0:44:32 much.
0:44:34 Risk aversion increases over time.
0:44:37 It has a lot to do with like literally a white banner volume in the brain.
0:44:42 But we have to train back because the more risk averse you are, the more afraid you are,
0:44:44 the more norepinephrine you’re producing.
0:44:46 That will block creativity.
0:44:48 It blocks empathy and it blocks wisdom.
0:44:54 So like you have to train back risk aversion to really flower in your 50s, 60s, and 70s.
0:44:58 But if you get it right and you’ve got all that stuff, these are dream employees.
0:45:01 This is a business revolution waiting to happen.
0:45:06 The very people that are getting forced out of companies, no, no, no, no.
0:45:10 They’re the very people we need in our companies most overall.
0:45:13 And in fact, this is not my line.
0:45:15 I think it’s Daniel Levitin might have said it.
0:45:17 It’s the first person I heard say it this bluntly.
0:45:22 But Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist who just wrote a book called Successful Aging, where
0:45:26 if you want, in my book, my book is sort of a fun adventure story, the sciences and the
0:45:27 footnotes.
0:45:31 And sort of at the end, if you really want every itch of the science, you can either take
0:45:35 my peak performance aging training, or you can read Successful Aging.
0:45:37 And like he goes through all of it.
0:45:38 We came to all the same conclusions.
0:45:42 Though I think I took my conclusions farther because I ran a bunch of weird-ass experiments
0:45:43 along the way.
0:45:48 But he said flat out, he’s like, the best advice I can give you on retirement is don’t
0:45:48 retire.
0:45:49 Don’t ever retire.
0:45:54 If you’re interested in peak performance aging, retirement is a bad idea.
0:45:55 Reinvention?
0:45:56 Maybe.
0:46:00 Maybe I don’t want to do the same thing I’ve been doing my whole life and I want to do something
0:46:00 new.
0:46:01 Great.
0:46:02 Fantastic.
0:46:03 Retirement.
0:46:04 Death sentence.
0:46:07 So I have a couple follow-ups to this.
0:46:10 A lot of my listeners are young entrepreneurs, business owners.
0:46:15 So if we’re going to take your advice, give older people a chance when it comes to hiring.
0:46:19 I mean, I know there’s a big ageism issue, especially in the tech world.
0:46:20 I used to work at Disney Streaming Services.
0:46:25 Like you were old over 40, you know, and like people looked at you sideways, you know, and
0:46:29 didn’t trust you to do your job, essentially, if you were older than 40, 45.
0:46:31 So I know there’s ageism.
0:46:35 So if you were to interview somebody in their 50s, what questions would you ask them to make
0:46:37 sure that they’ve been training their brain?
0:46:41 And so I would ask one, how physically active you are.
0:46:48 If you’re not dealing with somebody who has been regularly exercising for a while and hitting
0:46:51 all five dynamic categories, you don’t want to go near them.
0:46:55 The number one correlate with health and longevity over time is leg strength.
0:46:56 Believe it or not.
0:46:57 I know I was going to ask.
0:46:59 That’s one of my favorite facts.
0:47:00 Yeah, it’s wild.
0:47:03 And we could talk about why and whatever.
0:47:07 I don’t think you can ask incoming, you know, employees, hey, what do you squat?
0:47:08 Maybe you can.
0:47:14 But it actually, like, if we’re going to ask, put politicians in office in their 80s, those
0:47:16 questions become really freaking relevant.
0:47:19 Like that’s the, those are things you really want to know.
0:47:22 Are you engaging in challenging creative social activity?
0:47:27 Like, are you, that’s, those things become a checklist for folks over 50 identity, match
0:47:29 fit, self-forgiveness, forgiveness of others.
0:47:34 You don’t get access to the cognitive superpowers without those things.
0:47:40 So those are the kinds of questions you want to poke at to make sure are being checked off.
0:47:42 Those sorts of things.
0:47:46 Are you engaging in challenging creative social activities that demand dynamic, deliberate play
0:47:47 and take place in novel outdoor?
0:47:52 Like that, those things, not, they become a checklist and they become, if you want to
0:47:58 work here and you’re over this age, you got to do this because we need you, but we need
0:47:59 this version of you.
0:48:05 And the most important thing is I look for older adults with much younger friends.
0:48:13 I want to see those cross-generational friendships because older adults over 40, 50, one of the
0:48:18 reasons they’re not to be trusted is because they don’t get the job because they’re just
0:48:20 too out of touch and things have changed.
0:48:25 And there’s a lot of stuff that changes and stays the same.
0:48:28 And you sort of want the older adults around for that reason.
0:48:32 But you also being old is not an excuse for not keeping up either.
0:48:36 Like what I’m telling you is you’ve got access to more brain power.
0:48:39 So like, it’s really not an excuse as far as I’m concerned.
0:48:41 So I think it’s got to be mutual.
0:48:45 And I think the benefits are going to be amazing if it can be mutual.
0:48:49 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:53:21 I want to get into authentic learning and how older people can learn new skills, but let’s
0:53:24 go on the tangent of why we should never skip leg day.
0:53:32 So it turns out that both preserving physical abilities and cognitive function, leg strength
0:53:34 is the single largest factor.
0:53:35 Now, cognitive function is weird.
0:53:39 Some of it has to do with bone density.
0:53:43 Again, we’re back to the bones and the big bones in your legs.
0:53:45 And if they’re dense, they’re not losing their minerals, their nutrients.
0:53:47 They can feed the brain.
0:53:53 The second part is that if you’re not mobile, you don’t have a social life.
0:53:55 It’s a lot harder to have a social life.
0:53:58 If you don’t have a social life, you are not going to age successfully.
0:54:02 And in fact, if you don’t have a social life, peak performance, you’re just sort of lock out
0:54:07 of peak performance because you social support for a lot of different psychological safety
0:54:08 reasons and just performance reasons.
0:54:10 It’s really important to have social support.
0:54:14 And part of that, like you can get really great social support on the telephone, on Zoom.
0:54:20 We all learned that during COVID, but there is something to be said for in-person oxytocin,
0:54:20 right?
0:54:26 I always tell people if for whatever reason you’re stuck with the phone and Zoom, make
0:54:29 sure you pet a dog for at least eight minutes a day, a dog or a cat.
0:54:33 Petting an animal for about five to eight minutes also releases oxytocin and some of those other
0:54:34 pro-social chemicals.
0:54:39 So if you’re stuck on Zoom, we need social support for performance.
0:54:41 We definitely need for peak performance aging.
0:54:42 Animals are our friends here.
0:54:43 Yeah.
0:54:44 I love that.
0:54:48 I feel like you’re giving us so much great tips in terms of how we can age gracefully
0:54:52 and be impactful at an older age and still innovative and creative.
0:54:57 So this is such a meaningful episode to me because honestly, we don’t talk about this enough on the
0:54:57 podcast.
0:55:00 So we do need to learn as we’re older.
0:55:02 Obviously, it’s possible.
0:55:04 You learned how to park ski at 53.
0:55:09 So let’s talk about how we can learn and embrace authentic learning.
0:55:15 So let’s back up one step and talk about learning, like where you started.
0:55:20 I just want to start where you started, which is, so if you want to stave off Alzheimer’s,
0:55:23 dementia, cognitive decline, right?
0:55:25 Fluid intelligence, what matters?
0:55:26 Lifelong learning.
0:55:27 Why is that?
0:55:32 Expertise and wisdom are the two most important things we can do to develop what’s known as
0:55:33 cognitive reserve.
0:55:38 So if you have a high cognitive reserve, you could even have advanced Alzheimer’s.
0:55:39 And as you die, they autopsy your brain.
0:55:41 You’ve got tangles and plaques everywhere.
0:55:43 And it just looks like your brain’s mush.
0:55:45 And you’re still, nobody would notice if you were alive.
0:55:49 This was so, some of the early research that happened, they started autopsying brains and
0:55:52 being like, whoa, this person had advanced Alzheimer’s.
0:55:55 How the hell did they function so well up till age 100?
0:55:57 What is it?
0:56:02 Expertise in learning and, or to expertise in wisdom, which are two different things.
0:56:07 But important thing here is they’re big, broad networks and they’re in the prefrontal cortex.
0:56:11 So the prefrontal cortex is where it’s most vulnerable to cognitive decline.
0:56:16 It’s the newest brain structure from an evolutionary perspective, and it’s the most vulnerable.
0:56:19 You don’t suffer cognitive decline like deep in your brainstem.
0:56:20 It’s impervious.
0:56:23 But the prefrontal cortex is where it shows up.
0:56:25 Expertise and wisdom live in the prefrontal cortex.
0:56:30 And there’s these diverse networks, lots of redundancy, lots of backup.
0:56:33 So if this goes down, you got seven other copies over here.
0:56:34 Don’t worry about it.
0:56:38 So that’s where you have to start with lifelong learning.
0:56:42 And you want to do everything you can to maximize learning for that very reason.
0:56:45 So what do we know about learning?
0:56:48 One of the best ways to maximize learning is authentic learning.
0:56:54 This is a big movement in education right now, but, and it’s based on a whole bunch of different
0:56:55 stuff, but let me just talk about one thing.
0:57:02 So their attention, you can’t learn anything obviously without focus or attention, right?
0:57:04 Like paying attention is the gateway for learning.
0:57:06 Attention is a coupled system.
0:57:11 It’s linked to autonomy and autonomy means we like driving the bus.
0:57:13 We like being in charge of our own lives, right?
0:57:17 We can’t pay maximum attention to something if it’s not sort of by choice.
0:57:22 Authentic learning means we learn based basically exactly on who we are.
0:57:27 So it got a bad name early on because people started talking about learning styles.
0:57:29 Are you a visual learner or an auditory learner?
0:57:31 And that’s absolute nonsense.
0:57:33 Like that’s actually not true.
0:57:34 No, we’re all those things.
0:57:36 It depends on what we’re learning and how we’re wired.
0:57:37 And it changes over time.
0:57:38 And that’s not actually.
0:57:43 But what is true is everybody shows up somewhere on the introversion, extroversion scale.
0:57:46 Introverts need to learn in private.
0:57:48 Extroverts want to learn in public.
0:57:51 We’re somewhere on the risk aversion scale.
0:57:53 Like we all have, I’m this fearful.
0:57:55 And you can only be pushed so far.
0:58:01 And like, so those authentic learning is about like those kinds of questions, the questions
0:58:02 that really matter.
0:58:06 And so, you know, one of the most important things for me is I’m an introvert.
0:58:09 I don’t mind being bad at stuff, but I don’t like being bad in public.
0:58:15 So we, and most terrain parks are actually under chairlifts and very, very visible.
0:58:21 So I would take these park tricks into the side country and the back country and the woods.
0:58:23 And I’d learn them out of sight with my friends.
0:58:28 And then I could go back, like trying to do it the other way was impossible for me.
0:58:29 I don’t work that way.
0:58:32 And you can keep, there’s a lot more to authentic learning.
0:58:37 But the big point here is also taking on these kind of NAR style challenges late in life,
0:58:39 like learning how to park ski or whatever.
0:58:42 Phenomenal for peak performance aging, but you need a lot of motivation.
0:58:48 And it turns out we have, like, we are driven towards authenticity.
0:58:51 Carl Rogers argued that it functions as a fundamental drive.
0:58:57 A fundamental drive meaning it’s got as much power as a drive for sex or food or shelter.
0:59:01 You have a drive to be yourself, your authentic self.
0:59:06 And if you get it right, you get a huge boost in motivation, which is crucial for all this stuff.
0:59:12 So you learn better on the back end and you’re more motivated to learn on the front end.
0:59:18 And being that there’s a lot to do in peak performance aging and it can be challenging,
0:59:20 you want all the help you can get, right?
0:59:25 In Art and Impossible, I talk about one of the things peak performers are really good at
0:59:28 is they never meet a challenge around a single fuel source.
0:59:30 We know this food-wise, right?
0:59:34 Like you want carbs, protein, and fats before you’re going into workout.
0:59:36 Same thing with motivation.
0:59:37 You want authenticity.
0:59:39 You want autonomy.
0:59:41 You want passion, purpose.
0:59:46 All these big intrinsic motivators, curiosity, you want to stack them on top of each other
0:59:49 because it maximizes our motivation.
0:59:50 I love that.
0:59:54 So to wrap up this part of the interview, I’d love for you to just sort of summarize
0:59:59 what skills generally do you think older people are better at than younger people?
1:00:03 And older people, I guess, who have trained their brain properly, let’s say.
1:00:06 Well, anything that requires seeing things from other people’s perspectives
1:00:10 and multi-perspectival thinking, you’re just better at.
1:00:15 It’s harder to do when you’re younger because of how the ego functions and how the brain functions.
1:00:17 You’re just better at it when you’re older.
1:00:22 You can meditate a lot to sort of lower cognitive bias and do those things,
1:00:24 but it’s going to start to happen naturally when you’re older.
1:00:33 So to me, the big one, the cool one is the systems thinking part because I like one of the commonalities
1:00:40 among all the biggest brains I’ve ever met, all the real, the people who really can affect change
1:00:42 in the world, they’re all systems thinkers.
1:00:46 And it’s really hard to train people how to be systems thinkers.
1:00:49 It’s a tough skill to bring on.
1:00:53 You know, certain careers force you to learn it in different ways.
1:00:59 Writing, especially if you write books, because you have to hold 400 pages in your head and move
1:01:01 it around and be able to do stuff like that.
1:01:03 You have to be able to hold the big picture.
1:01:08 It’s sort of built into the job and it’s trained up over time, but it’s not trained up in a lot
1:01:09 of jobs.
1:01:12 Mostly we specialize, especially in the modern world.
1:01:13 We specialize, we specialize, we specialize.
1:01:18 And one of the things that I want to point out here is, and anybody who’s ever worked in
1:01:23 entrepreneurship, innovation, like, you know, all the big innovations are in the cracks between
1:01:23 disciplines.
1:01:30 It’s very hard to innovate inside that same funnel that everybody’s been in for 50 years, but you
1:01:35 move adjacent to where that funnel touches something and suddenly there’s a revolution waiting to
1:01:35 happen.
1:01:39 And that’s how you build companies and world changing companies and everything else.
1:01:42 You can’t see that shit if you’re not a systems thinker.
1:01:43 It’s completely invisible to you.
1:01:49 So the thing that I think is, is the most exciting over is that.
1:01:50 Yeah, that was really inspiring to me.
1:01:54 I’m actually writing a book with Penguin Random House coming out in 2025.
1:01:57 And that little bit of information was really inspiring.
1:02:00 I’m going to include it in my book and credit you.
1:02:00 Okay.
1:02:06 So Stephen, I want to wrap up this interview talking about your research in the, about the
1:02:09 blue zones, these long-lived communities around the world.
1:02:14 You alluded to some of it, but I’d love for you to sort of dive deeper on what you found
1:02:17 in terms of why these people live longer, happier.
1:02:21 Let me back this story up a little bit to what I tell you a story that’s not in the book.
1:02:22 Yeah.
1:02:24 That is where this actually starts.
1:02:28 So people may know this or not know this for almost the past two decades.
1:02:32 My wife and I run a hospice care dog sanctuary.
1:02:36 So for two decades, we’ve done hospice work with dogs.
1:02:40 We have a healing methodology that’s based on, it’s very low tech.
1:02:41 It’s flows.
1:02:43 It’s like lifestyle interventions in a sense.
1:02:47 Some flow science, some evolutionary psychology, nothing really fancy.
1:02:50 Our dogs all get checked out by vets when they come to us.
1:02:52 Before they come to us, they come from shelters.
1:02:56 But we, I mean, we specialize in the worst of the worst.
1:03:03 So if you are a geriatric chihuahua with an abusive past, three legs, one eye, cancer,
1:03:06 heart disease, mange, and flatulence, you’re our guy.
1:03:08 That’s who we work with.
1:03:12 And the vets would be like, we did get these dogs, dogs would be like, don’t get attached.
1:03:16 This dog is going to live a month, month and a half at most.
1:03:18 This is about to provide a very good death.
1:03:20 And we’d bring the dogs in.
1:03:26 And mind you, we’ve, over 700 dogs have passed through our facility and over 5,000 are our
1:03:27 program.
1:03:28 So big sample size.
1:03:33 And on average, our dogs wouldn’t live another month or six weeks.
1:03:35 They would live another three, four, five years.
1:03:36 Oh, wow.
1:03:39 You translate into that human numbers.
1:03:40 That’s right.
1:03:41 You get seven years for every year.
1:03:46 So like the top end of that, you’re getting an extra like 28 years, 30, like what the fuck
1:03:47 is going on?
1:03:48 Pardon my language.
1:03:53 So I started to ask questions like, what’s going on?
1:03:53 Why is this working?
1:03:54 What are we doing?
1:03:56 And will it work in humans?
1:03:58 Like, would any of this stuff work in humans, right?
1:04:06 And it turns out almost everything I were doing with the dogs exists in these so-called blue
1:04:09 zones, which is what led me to the blue zones in the first place.
1:04:14 So Dan Buehler is a National Geographic reporter in the early 2000s, noticed that there were places
1:04:19 on the planet where people lived, on average, 12 years longer than everybody else.
1:04:22 And they’re all over the place.
1:04:24 And he wanted to know, well, what are the commonalities?
1:04:25 And he did a whole bunch of research.
1:04:27 The research is a little controversial.
1:04:30 The controversy is not on the lifestyle stuff.
1:04:34 It’s on the, there’s some stuff that has been turned into supplements and it’s dietary.
1:04:36 And those are the open.
1:04:37 And those questions are open.
1:04:40 There’s no argument on sort of the lifestyle stuff with the blue zones.
1:04:46 And the commonalities are really like move around a lot, regular exercise, right?
1:04:48 De-stress regularly.
1:04:54 So have rituals, meditation, exercise, gratitude practices, breathing work, whatever it is,
1:04:55 walking in nature.
1:04:57 I don’t like have rituals to de-stress regularly.
1:05:01 A ton of stuff on social belonging and connection.
1:05:04 This is why challenging social activities matter so much.
1:05:06 This is built into blue zones.
1:05:11 There’s also this respect for the elders and these cross-generational friendships.
1:05:12 They’re built into blue zones.
1:05:14 There’s some evolution.
1:05:15 I mean, they eat healthy.
1:05:19 They eat less than most people and they eat very, very healthy diets.
1:05:23 But like, there’s no one diet across the boards that like works for everybody.
1:05:27 But those are sort of the commonalities and they live with passion, purpose, and regular
1:05:28 access to flow.
1:05:34 And these were all things that we were providing for our dogs and very like, for example, they
1:05:36 get social belonging and connection.
1:05:38 They really emphasize that you’re in the blue zones.
1:05:42 Some of them, people spend six hours a day hanging out with friends or family.
1:05:46 So a lot of it with our dogs, we had enforced petting time.
1:05:52 So when you have a lot of dogs, like we had various times, we’ve had 40, 50 dogs.
1:05:54 It’s hard to individual petting time.
1:05:57 You have to like, oh, I got to hang out with this dog.
1:06:00 But we would do it because we wanted these neurochemicals underneath that.
1:06:01 Same thing with flow.
1:06:04 We’d find ways to put our dogs into flow.
1:06:09 Flow is really important to peak performance aging for a lot of different reasons.
1:06:13 But the state, just a really positive, powerful, emotional state.
1:06:17 And some of the emotions that show up in flow stimulate the production of T-cells and natural
1:06:18 killer cells.
1:06:23 So T-cells fight diseases and natural killer cells fight tumors and sick cells and other
1:06:24 of the diseases of aging.
1:06:30 So when we get into flow, it lowers inflammation, which is tied to all the causes of aging.
1:06:35 It peruses T-cells, natural killer cells, a lot of benefits, and it boosts the immune system.
1:06:37 So this was the stuff we were doing in our dogs.
1:06:39 This is stuff that’s going on in the blue zone.
1:06:44 This is stuff we now widely know correlates to healthy longevity.
1:06:47 This isn’t really peak performance aging.
1:06:50 It’s sort of successful aging, healthy aging, right?
1:06:54 At this point, it’s like it should be common sense for everybody, really, is really what
1:06:55 it should be.
1:07:00 But one of the things that’s interesting is you also see a high, a lot of the places where
1:07:04 there are blue zones, you see a lot of action sport and outdoor athletes, too.
1:07:09 Colorado, Pitkin County, Colorado, and Eagle County, Colorado, and Loma Linda, California
1:07:13 are the four places in America where people, these are the blue zones.
1:07:15 Summit, Pitkin, and Eagle, this is Colorado.
1:07:20 That’s Vail, Aspen, Beaver Creek, all the big ski areas, a lot of outdoor stuff.
1:07:24 And in Loma Linda, that’s a Seventh-day Adventist population.
1:07:32 And they’re very social, very flowy, good dietary stuff, a lot of belonging, a lot of, so like
1:07:33 it’s the same stuff.
1:07:38 And a lot of outdoor activities, surfing, because it’s California on the ocean, right?
1:07:40 And they take advantage of that stuff, too.
1:07:40 Yeah.
1:07:42 So I’d love to get a couple examples here.
1:07:48 First of all, what are examples of getting into flow aside from sports as an adult?
1:07:49 That’s number one.
1:07:54 And then number two, like, what are some examples of creative social activities as an adult?
1:08:02 Well, one, it is completely erroneous, though myself and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi are totally
1:08:03 at fault for this.
1:08:04 Like, we are to blame.
1:08:10 But the idea that flow only shows up in athletes and artists is not true.
1:08:13 We focused a lot on athletes, and we focused a lot on artists.
1:08:17 So people think it’s only athletes and artists, but the most common flow state on earth is reading
1:08:19 or interpersonal flow.
1:08:20 Interpersonal flow is like the group flow.
1:08:24 You and your best friend get into a great conversation, and a whole hour goes by, and
1:08:25 you don’t notice it’s gone.
1:08:26 That’s interpersonal flow.
1:08:28 Happens all the time.
1:08:32 So one of the reasons you want to engage in challenging creative and social activities,
1:08:33 they all trigger flow.
1:08:37 So singing in a choir, very, very flowy.
1:08:39 Group flow, lots of research on that.
1:08:43 Gardening, very flowy, long walks in nature.
1:08:45 You know, nature hikes, very, very flowy.
1:08:52 Coding, architecture, drawing, drumming, dancing, on and on and on.
1:08:53 I mean, there’s a ton of flow at work.
1:08:58 In fact, flow is much more common at work than it is during leisure for a bunch of different
1:08:58 reasons.
1:09:02 But, you know, the list sort of goes on and on and on.
1:09:06 If we want to enjoy the second half, if we want to enjoy our lives in general, but if we
1:09:09 really want to thrive during our second half of our lives, you can’t do it without flow.
1:09:12 Flow is actually the engine of adult development.
1:09:14 It’s how we grow up.
1:09:16 We grow up by getting into flow states.
1:09:20 Coming out the other side is more complex, more skillful, more adaptive, more empathetic,
1:09:21 wiser.
1:09:22 And we move forward.
1:09:26 Like, so it plays a big role in adult development and successful in peak performance aging.
1:09:27 Yeah.
1:09:32 So just for all my young and profiters, I’m going to do a sort of Stephen Kotler marathon
1:09:34 when this episode comes out.
1:09:40 And I’m going to replay all of our older episodes about flow, about all the different things that
1:09:42 I’ve talked to with Stephen over the past.
1:09:45 So it will be a great educational value for all of you guys.
1:09:50 So Stephen, I end the show with a couple of questions that I ask all my guests.
1:09:51 And then we do some fun things at the end of the year.
1:09:56 The first one is, what is one actionable thing that our young and profiters can do today to
1:09:57 become more profitable tomorrow?
1:10:03 You can double down on your primary flow activity, which is whatever the thing you’ve done most
1:10:05 to your life that just drops you into flow.
1:10:06 For me, it’s skiing, right?
1:10:08 For my wife, it’s long walks with the dogs.
1:10:09 For my best friend is playing guitar.
1:10:13 Whatever that thing that most likely drops you into flow.
1:10:20 Flow massively amplifies, among other things, motivation, productivity, and creativity.
1:10:24 And here’s the cool thing, even though a flow state lasts about 90 minutes, sometimes they
1:10:25 can stretch out for longer.
1:10:30 The heightened productivity and creativity will outlast the flow state by a day, maybe two.
1:10:32 Flow also resets the nervous system.
1:10:35 It calms you down, flushes stress hormones out of your system.
1:10:41 So emotional regulation, emotional management, fear blocks performance on every level.
1:10:43 Flow resets the nervous system.
1:10:49 And the thing is, it’s most people, and especially all the people listening to this podcast, are going
1:10:50 to be like you.
1:10:53 You got to your 30s, and you stop skiing.
1:10:55 You put down childish things.
1:10:57 Skis go away.
1:10:58 The surfboard goes away.
1:10:59 The skateboard goes away.
1:11:02 You stop samba dancing and salsa dancing and all that stuff.
1:11:04 And the research shows that’s a disaster.
1:11:05 It’s a disaster.
1:11:10 In fact, we work with tons of people all over the world, and burnout is a real big issue.
1:11:14 The first thing we do to treat burnout is have them double down on the primary flow activity.
1:11:20 Research shows that if you want peak performance, you need to have like about three to four hours
1:11:24 a week on your primary flow activity just to keep your nervous system where it needs to
1:11:24 be.
1:11:25 Yeah.
1:11:28 I’d love for you to tell everybody about the Flow Research Collective and all the trainings
1:11:29 you guys have available.
1:11:32 Flow Research Collective is my organization.
1:11:34 We’re a research and training organization.
1:11:38 On the research side, we study the neurobiology of peak human performance, what’s going on
1:11:40 in the brain and the body when we’re performing at our best.
1:11:45 We did this work with scientists all over the world at Stanford and Imperial College London
1:11:50 and UCSC and UCLA and UC Davis and UCSF and a whole bunch of other acronyms.
1:11:53 We take the science and we use it to train people.
1:12:00 We train people in 130 countries, and we train everybody from professional athletes and members
1:12:07 of the special forces to soccer moms and insurance brokers and teachers and folks in the Air Force.
1:12:09 We work with a lot of companies in between.
1:12:16 Now we’re training Facebook or Meta, Accenture, Bain Capital, Audi, San Francisco Police Department,
1:12:18 the Air Force, Wisewatcher people.
1:12:24 Our trainings are for everybody, and if you’re interested, if you go to getmoreflow.com,
1:12:29 cheesiest URL in the world, but nobody was remembering any of the others, so I’ve given in,
1:12:33 and it’s now getmoreflow.com, despite the fact that I’m embarrassed to say it out loud,
1:12:38 but you can go there and sign up for a free hour-long coaching call with somebody on my staff,
1:12:41 so you’ll hear all about the trainings, you’ll learn everything.
1:12:42 Is it right for you?
1:12:42 Is it wrong for you?
1:12:45 Nobody on my staff gets every…
1:12:47 I’ll fire somebody if they try to sell you anything.
1:12:50 It’s just an informational conversation.
1:12:54 So it’s really mellow, and most people get a lot out of it, and it’s free, getmoreflow.com.
1:12:55 Amazing.
1:12:58 I’ll stick that link in the show notes to make it super easy for you guys.
1:13:00 Okay, last question of the episode.
1:13:04 And this is where you can feel free to add something that we didn’t get to talk about
1:13:06 or just something that’s on the top of your mind.
1:13:09 Doesn’t have to do with the topic of the episode.
1:13:09 It’s up to you.
1:13:12 What is your secret to profiting in life?
1:13:14 It’s just hard work.
1:13:15 I’ll give you an example.
1:13:21 I came up as a journalist, and I figured out very early on that most journalists hated rewriting.
1:13:22 They’d write their story.
1:13:24 They’d edit it.
1:13:25 They’d turn it in.
1:13:28 The editor would make changes, and they’d rewrite it once and turn it back in.
1:13:29 I found that out.
1:13:31 I was like, okay, you guys are doing it three times.
1:13:34 Clearly, my job is to make my editor’s job easier.
1:13:37 My job editor has to really comb through my articles.
1:13:38 It takes months.
1:13:39 He hates me.
1:13:41 That’s not, you know, I’m not a good employee.
1:13:44 So I started editing my stories 12 times.
1:13:48 I’d just figure out what everybody else would do, and I’d triple it or quadruple it.
1:13:50 I did that for years.
1:13:52 So, I mean, it wasn’t much of a secret.
1:13:58 I just figured I wasn’t as smart, as well-connected, as handsome, and all the other things as everybody
1:14:01 else, but I just figured out how to work them.
1:14:04 A lot of it is about smart hard work, not just hard work.
1:14:07 Smart hard, there’s better ways to do it.
1:14:11 I talk a lot about that in our country, about the advantages of smart hard work and smart hard
1:14:15 play, and the difficulties with just hard work is the only tool you reach for.
1:14:17 But really, like, there’s no secret.
1:14:19 I just put my butt in the chair, and I did the work.
1:14:21 I love that answer.
1:14:22 Thank you for sharing that.
1:14:23 Where can everybody learn about you?
1:14:27 Where can they get NARCountry, and how can they find more about you, Stephen?
1:14:33 NARCountry, you can go to NARCountry.com or Amazon or wherever books are sold.
1:14:35 StephenCottler.com gets you to me.
1:14:39 FlowResearchCollective.com gets you to the Flow Research Collective.
1:14:42 GetMoreFlow.com gets you to our trainings.
1:14:43 I think that’s it.
1:14:44 Amazing.
1:14:46 Always such a great conversation with you, Stephen.
1:14:47 Thank you so much for your time.
1:14:48 My pleasure.
1:14:49 It was great hanging out with you again.
1:14:52 Thank you.
1:14:52 Thank you.
1:14:52 Thank you.
1:14:52 Thank you.
1:14:52 Thank you.