Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Is Flow The Secret To Reducing Cognitive Decline? | Steven Kotler - Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective

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Lessons - Is Flow The Secret To Reducing Cognitive Decline? | Steven Kotler - Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover how optimizing flow states can supercharge cognitive and physical
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  performance, unlock hidden potentials in aging, and even protect against cognitive decline,
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  learn actionable strategies to enhance creativity, wisdom, and resilience for peak performance at any
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  stage of life. And do you feel that flow is the key to performance, especially in your new book,
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  you actually speak about in the later half of someone's life, how to maintain an optimized
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  performance? So in our country, I'd like you to walk through how that came about, but then
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  is flow the secret to reducing cognitive decline, Alzheimer's dementia without genetic precursors,
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  even like accelerating in physical tasks. Is there some reaction to these two?
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  So yeah, let me pull back, give you a big picture statement about, we'll just stand
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  cognitive peak performance for a second, and then let me move into the answer your question.
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  So flow is defined as an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best.
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  That is not an understatement, right? The list of skills that flow magnifies is extraordinary,
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  motivation, productivity, learning, creativity, collaboration, cooperation, empathy, wisdom,
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  happiness, well-being, overall life satisfaction. The reason is quite simply this.
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  When we say peak performance, I'm dominating fancier than getting our biology to work for us rather
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  than against us. What is that biology? Is this absolutely the question you asked?
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  Is it just flow? The answer is no, it's not just flow. From a cognitive side, when we're talking
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  about peak performance, there's four categories inside each of those categories. There's a big
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  long list of skills, but there's a category under the heading of motivation. And this is
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  extrinsic motivation, stuff will work hard in the world to get intrinsic motivation, passion,
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  purpose, autonomy, and goals, and grit. So that's all under the heading of motivation. There's a
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  similar subset of stuff under the heading of learning, creativity, and flow. And the way to think
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  about these categories is when you face any challenge, motivation gets into the game, learning allows
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  you to keep on playing, continue to play, creativity allows you to steer. And especially if you're
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  interested in the kind of stuff that the work I do on and possible, how do you get there? Where is it
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  exactly challenges or creative challenges? You need the creativity of the steer and finally flow,
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  which is the optimal performance. Is that we hardwire all of the, or excuse me, how we turbo boost
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  all of these results, sort of beyond all reasonable equitation? That's on the cognitive side. Now on
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  the physical side, flow does, it deadens pain, it amplifies strength, fast twitch muscle response,
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  a couple other things get amplified in flow. So there's a big physical impact as well, but the
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  bigger boost is cognitive. Now you asked a peak performance agent question. I have been studying
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  peak performance aging for almost as long as I've been studying flow for two reasons. One,
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  me had to accept me, high as the Godfather of flow psychology. Everything knows, oh,
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  we wrote a book called flow. What they don't realize is he actually started his career in creativity.
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  And then he moved immediately, did some flow work, creativity, and he never stopped working on flow,
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  but he went right into adult development. Why? Because flow is the engine for adult development.
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  How do we grow as people? Flow is woven into that equation. So all of this work sort of sits
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  in the heart of my field. The other thing is my wife and I for 20 years now have done hospice
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  care work for docs. And we specialize in worse, the worst cases. So if you are a three-legged,
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  one-eyed Chihuahua with an abusive past, cancer, heart disease, liver failure, and bad flatulence,
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  you are our dog. And we've developed a very amazing sort of healing methodology.
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  There's a sort of global movement to double canine lifespan. We have deeply involved in that.
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  There's some people doing really crazy whizz bang genetic engineering stuff. That's now what we do.
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  We work with evolutionary psychology and some flow science. And that's the work we do.
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  But we're very, very successful at it. It turns out the same stuff that works in dogs,
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  also works in humans. And this is very well established as well. But my point is I've been in this
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  field for a very, very long time. What happened and what is at the center of our country is
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  for reasons we can get into if you want to go there, but at long story short,
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  they're traditional story of aging. What I like to call the long slow route theory is that all
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  of our mental and physical skills decline over time and there's nothing we can do to stop this line.
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  That is the standard theory on aging. And most of us believe either that's true or some
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  version of that is true. And it turns out none of it's actually true. And there's a wild pile of
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  research that starts in the 1990s and goes through now that establishes all of this very,
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  very clearly. So all this stuff we used to think fades away over time. There's nothing we can do
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  about it. We now now they all use it or lose its skills. So on the physical side and on the mental
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  side, if we properly train all of these skills, we can hold onto them and even to advance them
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  much later in life than we thought fast. Now you asked a question about flow. So let me
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  talk about now we're telling you all together. I love to call it yeah. So let me bring it back to
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  your original question. Collier decline is a great place to talk about this. So we used to believe
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  Collier decline isn't happened. Well, we're going to get Alzheimer's. We're going to get dementia
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  and there's nothing we can do about it. And certain aspects of certain changes in brain
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  function that that do happen, right? Certain things biologically, but it turns out that a lot of
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  things that happen biologically, nobody's actually linked to Collier decline. So yes,
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  there are changes in brain function. We also, and this is Gene Cohn's work, predominately
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  founder of the godfather of geriatric psychiatry, sort of the founder of people performance aging.
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  He discovered that as we move into our 50s, there are because of shifts in the brain, we gain
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  access to what I call a suite of Collier superpowers. Whole new levels of intelligence open up.
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  Stuff we could not get access to before ways of thinking, ways of abstract reasoning problem
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  solvent. You get whole new levels of creativity as well, including divergent thinking that's
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  the outside the box really creative stuff that gets amplified wisdom, which is a very specific
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  neurobiological trait also gets amplified and empathy. So all these things happen now back to the
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  flow that if you want to stave off cognitive decline, you need to develop two things,
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  expertise and wisdom. And why is this? It's because the brain continues to produce neurons
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  until we die. In fact, parts of the brain will produce 700 new neurons a day up until very,
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  very late in life that keeps that keeps going. If you do all the right stuff,
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  where those neurons are matter. So a lot of the insults of aging are very local, right? This
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  part of the brain gets we write these kinds of shifts happen and most of the damage is in the
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  prefrontal cortex. The newest structure from the evolutionary perspective in the brain is where
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  most of the damage takes place. It's the first door road. Stuff that's older and deep in our brain,
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  that stays stays there. So how do you preserve the prefrontal cortex?
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  Wisdom and expertise. Wisdom and expertise create very diverse neural networks. They're not
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  localized in one part of the brain. They're all over the brain. So you're birthing a lot of
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  new neurons and you're creating a lot of redundant diverse networks. And there's so there's crazy
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  studies on this over and over and over. The most famous is probably the the sisters of Nouch Dom.
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  And this is one of the places this research started back in the 90s. This is a group of sisters
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  and they were they were very interested. They're very first of all, they're very into education.
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  So they like this research and they were very interested in people performance aging or successful
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  aging. So they're like this research. And it's a very cohesive group, right? They all live the
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  same. They eat the same foods. They do the same thing. So really good for science. And they all
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  donated their brains to science for autopsy after death. So bonus. And they started giving them
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  cognitive tests and physical tests every year for very long stretches of time. And what they
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  started to realize is that sisters were dying. And when they'd autopsy their brain, they would
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  find brains were full of dementia and Alzheimer's like bang hell was a plaques and the brain was
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  totally decayed. And yet during life, they showed no symptoms of Alzheimer's and dementia. None. And
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  they were performing on these cognitive tests incredibly well. And there's this study gets repeated
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  over and over and over again. We see this same thing again and again. But it's when we start to
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  figure out that certain lifestyle things, sisters got a lot of exercise. So that's the foundation
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  of oh, wait, exercise is neuro protective against cognitive blood that's it starts sort of there.
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  But it's wisdom and expertise that is really what you see more than else. The sisters are deeply
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  committed to life on learning. It's baked into what they do in the world. They're teachers,
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  they're educators, and it's how they live. So like they're building up expertise all the time.
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  What's the difference between wisdom and expertise? Wisdom is like expertise, all the stuff you're
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  learning consciously. I'm reading a book. I'm learning algebra wisdom is the oh, I'm watching the
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  group and it seems like there's these nonverbal, you know, social dynamics that you're a observer.
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  You can't quite name, but you're learning what they are and how to figure them out in emotional
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  intelligence stuff. That's all the wisdom stuff. And it's different parts of the brain that do it.
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  So those things are neuro protective against cognitive decline. Here's what matters for flow.
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  When we move into flow, one learning is massively amplified. U.S. Department of Defense found
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  that soldiers in flow learn 240 to 500 percent faster than normal. So you get a huge spike in
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  learning and flow naturally for neurobiological reasons we can talk about. It expands empathy.
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  Our ability to see things from other people's perspective expands naturally in flow.
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  This is the foundation of like that wisdom we were talking about. So flow amplifies expertise,
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  our ability to get better at things and these neuro protective and it amplifies wisdom.
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  Here's where let me tie this all together in a bun for you. So when I said earlier,
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  chick sent me a high work on flow and as it started the adult development and flow is how we become
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  adults because when we're in flow, we can only get into flow by using our skills to the utmost.
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  You got to like whatever you know, you're going to push on it and push it to the edge of your
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  abilities. You're going to be a little outside your comfort zone, right? What happens when we do
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  that? We grow, we learn, we get, we come back from that more adaptive, more complex, more wisdom,
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  more expertise. So what's interesting is flow is I don't, chick sent me a high seem to argue that
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  flow is the only driver of adult development in the end. He came to that conclusion and um,
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  I'm not sure I'm going to take, I go, honestly, it's the one of the major drivers of adult
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  development. Um, and as, but what's cool about it is it doesn't only teach us how to become better
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  adults and help us grow up. It actually helps us become great later in life because it protects
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  us against the ravages of age. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to
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  hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this
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  conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.