Especially recommended if you’re an athlete or do extreme sports, but The 15 year old surfer or snowboarder, who thinks about taking his career pro some day, the 33 year old writer, who often struggles with writer’s block, and anyone who thinks they’ve been put on this earth to achieve something great.Four Minute Books participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising commissions by linking to Amazon.This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Time slows down. None of these are good and are the enemy of flow. Whether its cooperative excitement or competitive jealousy, one person’s triumph becomes another’s motivation. First there is a rich environment, which is the novelty, unpredictability and complexity which are a good substitute for risk. On August 17th, 2000, Laird Hamilton rode Teahupoo (cho-poo) off the coast of Tahiti and made history doing something never done before. So, the lack can become unbearable. As athletes we know it all too well. The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler. Mihaly discovered that “intrinsically motivated” people received “peak experiences” as was coined by Abraham Maslow. The normal safety measures kept in place by the conscious mind are no longer. Hopefully one thing is now clear — flow is that advanced technology.”“Flow, they will tell us, is the gateway to impossible, but this has never been take two pills and climb Everest in the morning. Flow states, which can be considered elite performance on overdrive, take this process one step farther. It is the one thing that breaks human limitations, that fuels the huge rise of record breaking attempts in all fields in the past few decades. However, it turns out, they are mostly interested in taking “creative risks”.“The greatest athletes aren’t interested in taking the greatest risks. The Rise of Superman is an in-depth explanation of optimal human performance through mastery of flow state. Of course, since most people’s knowledge of action and adventure sports comes from energy drink ads and ‘blending with the environment’ doesn’t really move product, we’re sold this ‘extreme dude’ lie instead. Because attention and pattern recognition are so heightened by flow, training in the state radically increases situational awareness.”There are three experiments that have dominated the discussion about what defines the path to mastery. It's a collection of fascinating finds from my week, usually about psychology, technology, health, philosophy, and whatever else catches my interest. I’ll take all the failures. The best book on getting a basic understanding of Flow states and how to get there. They are released in roughly this order and provide a potent cocktail.“Alone, each packs a punch, together a wallop. There may be layer after layer of this experience. Instead of producing all these other brain waves, really great athletes can transition smoothly into the zone, creating that low alpha/high theta wave, and then hold themselves there, sort of in suspended animation, shutting out the conscious mind and letting the implicit system do its stuff.”This section discusses a day surfing at Jaws when had it not been for sudden insight, Laird Hamilton could have been killed on a very large tow in wave. Flow is what makes life worth living.”The Millennium Wave was perhaps the single most important wave every ridden. Action sports athletes have pushed their respective professions further and faster than any other area of sports.“Success in these danger-fueled activities requires incredible psychological and intellectual talents:  grit, fortitude, courage, creativity, resilience, cooperation, critical thinking, pattern recognition, high-speed “hot” decision making.”“Of all the things these athletes have accomplished, nothing is more impressive than their mastery of the state known to researchers as “flow”. But I got to see up close the incredibly powerful effect Shane had on people. This trigger means paying attention to all of these sensory inputs at once.“This is another of flow’s defining characteristics. His skis got tangled, he deployed his chute late and died on impact.Jeremy Jones is a 10 time big mountain rider of the year who was good friends with Shane McConkey. Together really is more than the sum of its parts.“Group flow is a social unifier and social leveler, creating what cultural anthropologists call “communitas” — that deep solidarity and togetherness that results from shared transcendent experiences.”“Amazing energizes. However, what we’ve seen is that most action sports athletes have taken a different path.The first experiment started with the hypothesis that talent is innate and what we call expertise (mastery) is the result of talented individuals identified early, then encouraged to blossom.