Flow & Transcendence: Exploring the Intersection of Flow, Well-Being, and Transcendent Experiences | Flow Research Collective Radio

If you study the science of cybernetics, you realize that that is what we are. So we have lots and lots of goals that some of them are preprogrammed through the course of human evolution. But we also have those that we create consciously in our own lifespan that can't be completely traced back to evolutionary goals. So it's actually useful to distinguish between self-actualization goals versus evolutionary evolved goals.

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If you are a leader, a knowledge worker, or an entrepreneur, and you want to take your professional success to the next level while reclaiming time, space, and freedom within your personal life, then Zero to Dangerous may be a fit for you. Zero to Dangerous is our flagship peak performance training. You'll work one-on-one with our coaches. You'll go through our whole curriculum. You'll join a community of peak performers from all over the world.

This was like a really weird thing that happened is my workday started ending at 2. So then somewhere in Zero to Dangerous, there was this idea that I needed now an entirely new category of things to do just because I enjoy them, which is an, you know, entrepreneur for 23 years, it never occurred to me to make a list of things to do for the sheer pleasure of doing them because I had gotten all my work done. Like, it never occurred to me to do that. It was really, really weird. I enforced the deadline, like it had to be real. I had to create the output to really have the experience be valid. And I was watching my productivity go up and up and up. And I was like, what do I do now? It's 2 o'clock. And it was just so weird. Like when you have, you know, 20 or 30 people who have weird experiences like that and you can put them in a way that somebody can kind of scan through those allows somebody to self-identify, like, oh God, that's really meaningful to me. Because some person's going to be like a 40-year-old dad who's going to go through Zero to Dangerous and make enough time to go see his kids play baseball or whatever. That's going to be somebody.

Go to getmoreflow.com, getmoreflow.com, pop an application through, takes 30 seconds. We will be excited to speak with you to see whether it's a good bit. So that's getmoreflow.com.

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Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance, access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Ryan Dorris, and together with bestselling author Steven Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio. Hey there, Rhian Dorriss here with Flow Research Collective Radio, and welcome to today's episode, which was an incredibly fun conversation and live Q&A with Stephen Kotler, who you all know from the Flow Research Collective, of course, and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, who you very likely know Scott is the host of The Psychology Podcast, which is the world's leading podcast on psychology. And he is one of the world's leading humanistic psychologists. And he is very close to us here at the Flow Research Collective. We are partners and Scott has been a coach for us. And this episode you're about to listen to was from a really, really fun live call that myself, Scott, and Stephen had. We laugh a lot. There's lots of jokes cracked that you're going to really enjoy, but the topic we went into is the most compelling piece of today's episode. And it was the question of how flow, which is our focus here at the Flow Research Collective, and transcendence or self-actualization, which is Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman's focus in his work with his recent book, Transcend, being a very prominent example of that. That's what we focused on. We focused on how flow and self-actualization intersect and relate, how flow can drive transcendent experience, which can impact self-actualization and transcendence, how they are distinct, how flow in certain ways can detract from transcendence or self-actualization, and lots and lots more. You're going to love it. You're going to love the fun we had. And I'm really excited for all that you're going to learn about how to increase your access to flow, how to use flow as a vehicle for self-transcendence, and how to also move towards self-actualization in your own life. So, with that, enjoy today's episode with myself, Steven Kotler, and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman. Alrighty. So, let's dive in. This is a special Crowdcast with Steven Cutler and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, and we're going to be talking about two big topics: flow and transcendence. The subtitle for today is exploring the intersection of flow, well-being, and transcendent experiences. I actually didn't have an intro prep for either of you because I think everyone on here knows both of you, but I'm actually going to throw it to you both just in case we have any attendees who don't know you. To give a quick overview of each of your backgrounds, and then we'll recap what we're going to be covering today and we'll dive in with the first question. So, Scott, I'll throw it to you if you want to do a really quick intro of yourself just for anyone who somehow has been living under a rock.

I think I should intro Scott and Scott should intro me.

I like that.

Ladies and gentlemen, Scott Barry Kaufman, one of my absolute favorite people in the universe, really one of the smartest people on the planet when it comes to creativity and got to be the world's leading expert on Maslow and the early humanist psychologists at this point, and just a great heart and a great mind, and my dear friend Scott Barry Kaufman. So top that, Scott, go ahead.

I like that intro. I will keep it the same way. And since Stephen is an awesome human, he is one of the best writers of our generation and thinkers and scientists. You know, people don't know that, but you know, people don't realize, like, I've seen papers on neuroscience, papers on all this stuff that like will give, uh, neuroscientists a run for their money. I would call you a polymath is what I would call you if I had to call you something. Really a fun dude, fun guy to chill with as well.

That was great.

That's better than anything else I would've come up with.

Thank you for those intros. That was super. Ultimately, this is a discussion about how flow and transcendence intersect. And I want to begin by, as Steven often says, defining terms and clarifying the sort of parameters for the conversation by getting clear on how these two let's just call them constructs, diverge from one another. So, I'd love to have each of you define the differences between flow and transcendence or self-actualization. And, let's take it from there. Scott, I'm going to throw it over to you to kick us off with that question.

Yeah.

I'm happy to kick it off, but I really was curious to get Steven's definition of flow because I'm not really good at defining flow and I actually would love to hear Steven's.

Yeah. This is one of those funny things because I don't have a definition of flow. As far as I can tell, science, at least since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Boredom and Anxiety, has had a definition of flow, which is flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. And if you want to go one layer down right into what does that actually mean psychologically, Csikszentmihalyi says, well, it's a state that has these 6 core characteristics: complete concentration on the task at hand, merger of action and awareness, the vanishing of self, a sense of control, time dilation and an autotelic experience or an ecstatic experience. That's psychological definition. I colloquially say it's those moments of rapt attention and total absorption. It's so focused on what we're doing that everything else just seems to disappear. That's action awareness merging, time dilation, self-vanishing. That's all those things. And throughout all aspects of performance, both mental and physical go through the roof. And that's the autotelic part plus the sense of control. We don't experience peak performance from the inside. From the inside, it feels like a sense of control, right? So that's sort of how I break that down. But I don't try to go farther than that because I think everybody keeps reinventing their terms in science. And I think Mike, as far as I'm concerned, sort of came in and says, well, Maslow had called it peak experience. I'm not 100% certain that we can't take what Abraham Maslow meant by peak experience and translate. I think it captures almost 80% of flow. There's 20% that's left hanging out there that I don't think is covered by the term. But I feel like everybody keeps reinventing the term. Which makes it harder and harder and harder to do the research. I'm just like, I don't need to reinvent a term so I can live on my legacy in science. I want to stick with the one we've invented and I actually would like to push the research farther.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Oh, I view flow as part of a continuum of self-transcendent experiences. And, all these self-transcendent experiences are tied together by two major properties. One is a decrease of focus on self, so self-focus, and another one is connectedness with the world. So it's not just like connectedness with like your mother or your friend, it's how much do you feel oneness with the thing you're creating or even, because I see as a continuum all the way up to like the mystical experience. As I see a really extreme version of flow or transcendent experience where you feel one with everything. So I see it on that kind of continuum of experiences.

How do you both think about self-actualization or transcendence as distinct or diverging from flow?

I think they're very different things. Flow is an altered state of consciousness. It's a state. It comes, it goes, it's not permanent. Scott, please correct me if I'm wrong, but when I think about self-actualization or transcendence, those seem to be stable. Those are not states, those are kind of traits. They're stable. They exist over long periods of time. And, better or worse, flow comes with an enormous rush of feel-good neurochemistry underneath it. And, that neurochemistry comes and it goes and how long it lasts is based on biology, whereas my understanding of self-actualization and transcendence, these are more permanent states and permanent ways of sort of looking at the world and being. And, I think where I would start if I was looking at altered state experiences, I would start asking questions about when people use the term enlightenment, right? And a lot of scientists have looked, you know, Andy Newberg, who's a close friend of both Scott and mine, has worked really hard on this. A bunch of other people have worked on it as well. My question is, is enlightenment, self-actualization, transcendence, are those different things? But flow is more like in spiritual metaphysical terms, it's a satori experience. It's a brief glimpse of this possibility of a more stable experience. And does flow over time lead to that more stable experience? Is an open question. We can debate that, but I'm going to stop here and let Scott talk.

Stephen, I actually want to come back to that in a second. And yeah, Scott, I would love your take on this question. If you could also break down a sailboat model for people just to make sure we're all up to speed on that. And then Stephen, I'd love to come back to you and ask you about what we know currently about this sort of state-to-trace impact of flow on transmission.

And Scott, would you do me a favor before we do go anywhere for folks who haven't heard these terms before? Can you define self both as self-actualization as Maslow or yourself understands it? And same with transcendence, so we can just like ground our terms a little bit.

Yeah, that'll be really helpful. I was going to do that. Self-actualization can be thought of as what is the creative potential that you uniquely have that if realized will really show the uniqueness of yourself. See, Maslow really distinguished between the basic needs we have and share with others, like the need for connection, the need for self-esteem, the need for safety. Those things are very, very important, but they don't make you very special to I care about connections, you know, everyone cares about connections, they want to make connections. But when you say like, I can play a cello sonata like no one else can, then you're in a different category. Do you know what I mean? We're talking about your unique creative potential. And that's how I like to think of self-actualization. But there doesn't necessarily have to be a pro-social or societal contribution aspect to self-actualization. I do believe you can self-actualize and it doesn't always have to be like this world-changing, like, you know, saving the children sort of. There's many, many ways people can self-actualize. I, I, you know, I'm often asked, well, if you're alone in the woods and you write poetry your whole life and it's beautiful poetry, but you hide it in a box, you never share it with the world, is that person self-actualizing? Yes, I would say yes. You know, like, who's that?

I mean, you're asking— that's Emily Dickinson. Yeah, I mean, she didn't hide in the woods, she hid in an attic, and nobody saw it until she was dead. But that's Emily Dickinson. I don't know if she's self-actualized, but if you've read her poetry, she is definitely awake.

Yeah, it's beautiful poetry. But I see that as a difference between that and transcendence. So with transcendence, Maslow actually viewed self-actualization as just a bridge to transcendence, whose function— I thought this was very poetic— he said its function is like to erase itself. Because ultimately, with transcendence, you're using your highest creative potential in a way where there's no boundary anymore between self and world, so that what is automatically good for you is automatically good for the world. And he called it synergy. That phrase synergy is really a beautiful term that really only comes when you're talking about transcendence, in my view. And I'm obviously talking about horizontal transcendence. My theory of transcendence is very horizontal, as opposed to vertical transcendence. Like, I'm enlightened and you're not, that would be vertical. Transcendence. You know, you know, people who take a, you know, do the yoga downward dog facing pose and think they're enlightened all of a sudden because they did that.

Hold on, hold on. You mean that's not true?

No, not necessarily. Not necessarily. You know, having your—

I'm really disappointed. I've been doing yoga for a while. My dog is down. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

It can help. It can help. I got nothing against yoga. I'm sure there's plenty of people in this room who love yoga.

I've been doing it for 30 years. I love it.

It can be great. It can be great. But if you shoot to the top of, you know, this imaginary pyramid that Maslow drew, thinking that if you just shoot for transcendence, all of a sudden all your other needs are going to magically— like your need for ego is going to magically disappear. You've got another thing coming. That's not the way that humans work. So that's why I really believe in this self-actualization is really, really important first to really integrate yourself and really get clear in what, who you are and what you can offer the world before you transcend it.

Scott, can you just elaborate a little bit more on your sailboat model here as well? And then Steve, we'll come back to you on the flow side.

So, in a nutshell, it turns out that the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow never drew a pyramid. And even though a lot of people have heard of this hierarchy of needs where you see needs for safety, need for belonging, you need for self-esteem, and then for self-actualization. So, he never drew it that way, never thought about it that way. That were a bunch of psychology and management textbooks that just missed the boat on that one. So, I think a better way to actually describe describe Maslow's theories through a sailboat in the sense that we have security needs and growth needs. We have both. Both are very, very important in our lives, and they do have a certain priority. So hierarchy of needs does make sense to a certain degree in the sense that if you're with too many holes in your boat, in your sailboat, where are you moving? You're not moving anywhere. You need to focus all your attention and resources on plugging that boat. But ultimately, you have to be vulnerable and open that sail if you want to move in the direction you most want to go. So the sail and the boat are both very important. I mean, also, there's so— there's a lot to metaphor in the sense that you can go all the way with this. We're all moving in our own boats, but ultimately we're all in the sea together. So we ultimately, you know, what we do really does have impact. And same with the stressors like waves, like COVID waves can come crashing down on all of us at once, but we still have to move into the port, you know. So values and purpose is a big part of the sailboat metaphor as well. You know, when that sail is open, you're moving to the port that you want to sail in, knowing that there's all these stressors in life and all these things that could come crashing down on us, but you still have to you still have to move. The point is you still have to keep choosing growth day after day after day.

So when you were earlier defining the path towards self-actualization and transcendence, very important in your definition was what happens when the border between self and other disappears, when we feel cosmic unity, right? And we know from Andy Newberg's work, Judson Brewer's work, a bunch of other people, we know what's going on when that happens. We know that's activity in the temporal-parietal junction, the right parietal lobe, a couple other things. And, we know this obviously shows up in deeper flow experiences. Flow is a continuum of experiences from microflow states to macroflow states. And usually, that continuum is described by— I named those 6 characteristics of flow. And, when they're at 1 or 2, that's microflow. And, when they're turned up to 11, that's macroflow. As we move up to 11, widely acknowledged that some of the quote-unquote more mystical spiritual experiences, out-of-body experiences, cosmic unity happen. You know, in flow, one of the things that you get that's very interesting is it's not just you become one with everything, you tend to become one with whatever you're focused on, right? When I was writing Rise of Superman, I told that Dean Potter experience, he became one with a bird. Surfers talk about becoming one with the ocean, blah, blah, blah. That's actually fairly common. So what's interesting to me is that it's a small chunk of the flow experience. And, you know, in a sense, it's often treated— I don't want to say as ephemera, but it's like the fireworks. Flow is about peak performance and creativity and like all— it's an action state. And while there's more subtle metaphysical experiences and people are obviously deeply moved by it, What's interesting to me is that Maslow, in your definition, has— that you've privileged this one. I don't know if it's an epiphenomenon, but it's one aspect of it into meaning. And I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just noticing it and listening to you talk and wondering about it.

I think one area of potential disagreement from us, which is always good, you know, would be boring if we're just like, I agree, I agree on everything. Is flow as action, high performance. Maybe there is an important distinction between peak performances and flow. If you're going to see flow that way, I see peak experiences as not about high performance. So I see peak performance is not necessarily the same thing as peak experience, although—

Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, different things. Different things.

Yeah.

And if that's the case, they can overlap.

They can overlap. They can, but they don't necessarily overlap. That's A great point. Great point, Ray. I think that there might be value then in not treating peak experiences synonymous with flow experiences because a lot of the kinds of experiences Maslow was describing, I don't think they'd be things that we would naturally think of as high performance, like childbirth. Do you see childbirth as high performance? I guess it is in a way.

Well, from a survival of the species perspective, is there a moment that matters more? I mean, if you're talking about real peak performance, right? Like, I don't know. This metaphor goes in places that I don't want. Like, it's funny in a bunch of different ways and I'm not meaning it that way, but I like, from an evolutionary perspective, that's, you're raising a very interesting question. I don't have the answer, but it's an interesting question.

It's an interesting question. I think of that one because that's the very common peak experience for women. It is. But watching a sunset, when you're enjoying a quiet time with a friend and you really feel like you're one with the friend, is that, is that high performance? Like, I, I don't think that makes sense in that kind of situation.

So, okay, so let me— by the way, high performance is a tricky term here, I guess.

Please define it for us. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't know if I can define it, first of all, but I want— the point I was going to make is some of the skills that we know are amplified during flow— cooperation, collaboration, empathy, right? These are not normally like peak skills, but if you're sitting— if you and I are sitting and having interpersonal flow, we're lost in a deep conversation, heightened collaboration, cooperation, pattern wrecking, all the stuff that you get in flow, it's going to— we're going to have more connection. It's going to be a deeper conversation. And I would call that peak performance because, I mean, first of all, fundamental human needs are we have social needs. So, from a performance benefit, if I can have a 10-minute conversation with you in flow and bond with you really, really tightly, it's saving me from having hours and hours of a conversation to try to find the same thing elsewhere. So, there's a productivity aspect to this interpersonal idea even though you and I would never— wouldn't think about it that way, but you could. You could reframe it that way.

Well, you have a very unique take on this. And this also relates to something Brent Hogarth wrote on Twitter. He put a link to an article of the kind of state of where non-achievement is, you know, there's no goal for you. You took issue with this.

Yeah, I always take— yeah, I don't. Yeah, sorry, Brent. I love you. You're out there. Here's why I take issue with it. The idea of non-achievement flow, right? This is flow in non-goal-oriented situations, and everybody always brings up play as an example of nonachievement. And I would totally agree with you, except from an evolutionary perspective, we know what play is doing. Like, there's books and books and books, and you've read them and I've read them, and a lot of people have read it. Serving, whether it's skill acquisition or teaching morality or ethics, like, those are all performance performance-based things in a sense. And even non-goal-directed play, the goal of play is the continuation of play, is the learning of— like there's always goals wrapped into that. I think this is one of these things where the European Flow Association really got hung up on these questions for a very long time. A lot of people studied this question in flow research for almost 10 years and I never quite got it. And this could be me being stupid, but I don't— like I I can't wrap my head around what it means because there's always some kind of— we're a goal-oriented machine. There's no such thing as non-goal-directed behavior. Can't really happen.

I think just on that note, there may be a sort of a semantic component there where people are using goals in a different sense. So, maybe you can break down what you mean by goal-directed machine versus someone explicitly kind of consciously setting a goal and then doing an activity.

Oh, yeah. I'm not even talking— I'm not like literally— so, the goal-directed system, the seeking system is your dopamine system. And, every millisecond, dopamine goes up and down based on future prediction. The brain is always trying to predict what's going to happen next and how much energy do I need for it, right? Where is the organism going next? How much energy do I need for the challenge? And, we get prediction errors basically. Is this right or is this wrong on a moment-by-moment basis with dopamine? Right. If our prediction is wrong, the dopamine goes away. If it's right, we get a little bit more. But this happens every millisecond that we're alive. And this is the goal-directed system. So when I say we're goal-directed machines, I mean at a really foundational level. Unless you're going to bypass the basal ganglia and the entire dopamine system that's attached to it, there is no such thing as non-goal-directed behavior, as far as I can tell from a neuroscience perspective.

A lot of that sort of goal direction is not necessarily happening within conscious awareness.

So, here's something interesting. This same system, which is a goal-directed system, what about non-duality and oneness? We know neurobiologically what's involved when we have experiences of non-duality and oneness. We have a good idea what's going on in the brain at the same time. Non-duality and oneness have to be the least goal-oriented states you could possibly think of because there's no more self, right? All those things are gone and fallen away. But this goal-directed system is still at work underneath it all. So from a neurobiological perspective, I hear these arguments, but I don't— they don't make any sense to me. It sounds like you're having psychological arguments. You're arguing about terms that don't actually have precise neurobiological meanings. And once you get one level down to the neurobiology, this is not real.

Before I get into my own personal opinion on this, I just— a meta commentary. It's fascinating that you feel that way, considering that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi original, he wanted to call it the autotelic personality. His whole— that literally means with no goal. What he wanted to do with flow originally was to treat it as a goalless, sort of intrinsically enjoyable activity.

Okay, but that— okay, so that's a fair point. Yet if you go back and look at like the origin of the thinking of flow comes out of— you go to read Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's very first book on this, The foundational thinking, thought that led him to flow, it wasn't— he didn't discover flow. He discovered the challenge-skills balance, and the challenge-skills ratio was always leading towards this state. Challenge-skills ratio, by definition, says there's a task. I have the skills or I don't have the skills to meet this task. That's a goal-oriented system. I need to accomplish the task. That's a goal. I have the skills or I don't. That was his foundational thinking.

So he could—

Whatever examples were different, I mean, I'm not saying he's wrong, but I'm saying that his own research and where he started with these questions point in a different direction. I wish if Mike was still alive we could have this conversation. It'd be awesome.

Oh my gosh, it would be absolutely incredible. And we really would love to get your thoughts in the chat box. I mean, there's a lot of really amazing people in this room that could equally be up here on the stage.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Almost all of you all. The goal-directed point you're making, if we really want to nerd out about it, I mean, it is true that humans are cybernetic systems. And if you study the science of cybernetics, you realize that that is what we are. So we have lots and lots of goals that some of that are pre-programmed through the course of human evolution, but we also have those that we create consciously in our own lifespan that can't be completely traced back to evolutionary goals. So it's actually useful to distinguish between self-actualization goals versus evolutionary evolved goals. That's one important distinction I would make. So like mating, right? You're not special if you say, I want to have sex, right? How does that make you specifically, particularly creative to say that, you know?

Hey there, just gonna interrupt. If you are a leader, a knowledge worker or an entrepreneur and you want to take your professional success to the next level while reclaiming time, space, and freedom within your personal life, then Zero to Dangerous may be a fit for you. Zero to Dangerous is our flagship peak performance training. You'll work one-on-one with our coaches. You'll go through our whole curriculum. You'll join a community of peak performers from all over the world.

This was like a really weird thing that is my workday started ending at 2. So then somewhere in Zero to Dangerous, there was this idea that I needed now an entirely new category of things to do just because I enjoy them. Which is, you know, entrepreneur for 23 years, it never occurred to me to make a list of things to do for the sheer pleasure of doing them because I had gotten all my work done. Like, it never occurred to me to do that. It was really really weird. I enforced the deadline, like it had to be real. I had to create the output to really have the experience be valid. And I was watching my productivity go up and up and up, and I was like, what do I do now? It's 2 o'clock. And it was just so weird. Like, when you have, you know, 20 or 30 people who have weird experiences like that and you can put them in a way that somebody can kind of scan through those, it allows I want somebody to self-identify like, oh God, that's really meaningful to me. Because some person is going to be like a 40-year-old dad who's going to go through Zero to Dangerous and make enough time to go see his kids play baseball or whatever. That's going to be somebody.

Go to getmoreflow.com, getmoreflow.com, pop an application through, takes 30 seconds. We will be excited to speak with you to see whether it's a good fit. So, that's getmoreflow.com. I want to build on the goals a little bit here. Scott, something you said in Transcend was, "It is precisely when the foundational structure of the self is shaken that we are in the best position to pursue new opportunities in our lives. And Scott, I would love if you could speak to that. And then Steven, if you could speak to the way in which the foundational structure of the self is changed in flow and what impact that may have outside of flow experiences on personality or trait rather than state changes. But Scott, let's start with you.

What great questions. Well, what you're kind of referencing is linked to post-traumatic growth.

Growth.

And that field, yeah, we have these kind of seismic earthquakes, psychological earthquakes, where our assumptions about the way the world works has been foundationally violated in many different kinds of ways that can be possible. Where we thought the world was safe, you know, and then things happen to us. Or, you know, with COVID we thought, oh, could you ever imagine a world where you couldn't just be free walking outside without a mask? And now we're always like, oh, did I bring my mask with me? That was— I would call that a psychological seismic earthquake. Usually in those kinds of moments, though, there is an opportunity for growth. We often treat it as though, oh, well, the old is gone, so therefore what good could possibly come out of this? But actually, there can be a very, very strong shifting in priorities and newfound sense of purpose and meaning and connection with others in lots of very meaningful ways. So yeah, what you mentioned there is a very strong link to the field of post-traumatic growth.

I have to agree with Scott. I think that anytime the self gets shaken, right, and you get— you're forced to have a different perspective on yourself than normal, that's where growth emerges, right? Where the self vanishes, the self gets foundationally shaken. What's really interesting about flow to me is that is a very good definition. I mean, the self dissolves in flow, right? You're getting outside the self and And what's interesting to me is we know that flow over time increases empathy and it increases ecological awareness, all these sort of things that would lead one towards transcendent self-actualization. But, you know, if flow was instant self-awareness and instant enlightenment, as years ago somebody pointed out, like every surfer would be a Buddha. That's not the case. So, you know, it's not a one-to-one. Just because you're having a flow experience and you're getting outside the self doesn't mean you're growing. And this is the same thing with psychedelic experiences. You can have psychedelic— you can go to parties and do psychedelics all the time and watch your consciousness explode and just be wanting to get laid, right? You're not using it as a personal growth tool. You're using it to fulfill, you know, basic needs. No judgment here. Fine. I have no problem with that. But you're not doing the work towards self-actualization in the way we think about it. So I don't think flow or any of these transcendent experiences where you get outside the self guarantee growth. But I think that's the— in a sense, I think that's the— that makes it very— it's a hell of a lot easier, right? When you're so tucked inside your shit, at least for me, when I'm so tucked inside my shit and everything's going on, you know, I can barely get outside my head, let alone get kind of broken open the way that you need to, to really get the distance from the self for growth. Now, that just may be me and I may be hard-headed and dumb, but that's sort of how I think about it.

Yeah. What you're saying makes so much sense, Stephen. Well, we were kind of talking about this a little bit just earlier just before this webinar. We were shooting the shit a little bit and we were talking about that. I do think that there's a real deep wisdom there behind what you said in that the flow state comes along with it almost necessarily a less of a focus on self. And, that's what makes it a self-transcendent experience. That's what puts it on the continuum. I mean, I do see flow is on that continuum of— I call it actually the unitary continuum. My colleague David Yaden and I call it that, but it's on there. And you can increase a sense of unity with what you're working on, but you can then start to expand that and increase your sense of unity. Like I said earlier, to the grandiose mystical experience where you feel one with everything, the universe, the, you know, you do enough drugs, you'll be one with everything, you know.

To counter that for a second here, do you both think that because we've kind of loosely touched on the relationship flow can have to accelerating transcendence and growth, can the opposite be the case where there are potential downsides with respect to flow from becoming, as you call it, Scott, the whole human? Let's say, for example, if someone's prioritizing flow before some more fundamental fundamental needs like connection, safety, and security. Examples that come to mind might be adrenaline or flow junkies, extreme athletes, work. I think workaholism potentially may fall into this category. So, I'm curious if there is a role that flow can play in actually sort of limiting or inhibiting growth or transcendence.

Wow, what a great question. What do you think, Rian?

Yeah, let's start there. What do you think? I think yes. I think yes. I'm not going to hold back why.

I mean, we don't have to foot the foot, but I'm sure you have good thoughts on it, but no pressure.

I'll answer after you do. I have a clear opinion in my head, but I don't want to start the discussion with it.

I absolutely do think so. Within my model of self-actualization, you can be getting into flow in lots of things that are not your highest creative potential, and it can be taking your time and energy away from the things that you could be doing to get into your highest creative potential. It's kind of similar to my criticism against growth mindset theory, Carol Dweck's. That everyone loves, you know, everyone loves it unanimously. And I feel like I love the research on it and I think it's important, but I also think it's important to recognize that what's not worth doing is not worth doing well, which is a Maslow quote. And a lot of people might have a growth mindset for things that are not actually helping them grow as a whole person. And therefore, why should we be extolling the merits of growth mindset in that case? You can have a growth mindset for anything. You know, serial killers can be like, I believe I can kill 5 more people next week than I did last week. Whatever. Morbid example. But, my point, that was my extreme example to show you that just applying a growth mindset to something doesn't make it in and of itself growth-oriented. And, that's the point that I wanted to make in my book, Transcend. And, that's kind of how I would answer that question.

I think flow, a lot of the psychedelic experiences, the stickier, stickier meaning more addictively fun, meditative experiences, right? Andrew Huberman said this. He said, you know, better living through chemistry still requires better living. And I think that's true if you're talking about flow, if you're talking about any of these transcendent states. If you just get addicted to the, like, feel-good neurochemistry that's generated, then you've just got addictive behavior. You could be addicted to flow or you could be addicted to cocktailing MDMA and cocaine to get at the same neurochemicals that you get. And you know what I mean? Like, I don't think addictive behavior is addictive behavior is addictive behavior. And I'm not saying bad or good, right? I think there are certain paths towards transcendence that might go through that kind of behavior. I think all the— all of these experiences are they're addictive experiences. And, if you're just in it for the pleasure ride, that's not going to lead towards growth, I don't think automatically, or if it is, it's very slow as far as I can tell.

Yeah.

It looks like we're in agreement on this. Yeah.

Well, and the research on dark flow has been showing that it actually accelerates addiction if you experience flow in addictive activities as well. So, it actually can kind of exacerbate that even further.

I'll give you another example where you see it a lot. I see, God, the pro surf tour, a lot of the pro action sports tours, very high-flow environments. People don't want to come down after the competition, so they're using drugs to keep themselves on a flow high. And, a couple years ago, there were 4 or 5 overdoses on the pro surf tour in one year. It was nuts. And what you're looking at is people not wanting to come down from the huge flow high that is competition. I mean, okay, I don't know if that's all you're looking at, right? Addictive behavior has a lot of— yeah, I can't, I can't say that. But part of what contributes to that, I believe, is you get this huge flow high and then you don't want it to go away, so you chase it with addictive states. But I think this is the problem in general for flow. Even if you're not chasing with drugs, you're chasing the flow because you don't want it to end. And that's not a good recipe for a high-flow lifestyle. If you keep chasing after the state, you're going to exhaust all the neurochemicals that show up in the state. It's going to be harder to get back into flow. So, you can end up locked out of flow for a longer period of time than you want anyways. It's counterproductive one way or another.

It reminds me of chefs. There's extremely high alcoholism within chefs, I think for a similar reason where the flow can be so intense that they can't come down. And stand-up comedians talk about not being able to sleep after doing a set for 6, 7, 8 hours and often use kind of substances to mitigate that. I'm going to start pulling up some questions here that we've got from you all. So, first question, and Scott, I would love you to speak to anything that may be relevant from your expertise in intelligence and creativity here. What kind of studies between ADHD and flow have been done. This is a common question, Stephen, I know you get. She says, it appears to me that there are some pretty solid parallels, but I've been unable to find anyone specifically doing this research. Can you point me to these studies if you know of anyone doing this work? So flow and ADHD, I'm curious for both your takes there.

Yeah, I recommend checking out my Scientific American article, The Creative Gifts of ADHD. Working with neurodiverse kids, part of my career is working with people on different spectrums, the ADHD spectrum, the autism spectrum, dyslexia, other kind of spectrums there. It's part of the neurodiversity movement. You find that people who have been diagnosed with ADHD tend to get what's called hyperfocus. And I don't know if it's the same thing as how Steven conceptualizes flow, but there is a real phenomenon where when it comes to the thing that they really love doing, the activity where they can engage in their default mode network or their imagination brain network and get deeply absorbed in that network as opposed to having to be forced for their attention to be outside of themselves, like when watching a boring lecture, you know, their attention is all over the place. But if you can get them deeply engaged in their, their associative network and their imagination brain network, they actually tend to show stronger hyperfocus than people who haven't been diagnosed with ADHD. So there's a hidden gift there under certain contexts.

I have zero expertise here whatsoever, right? So I'm, I'm outside my lane, but I will say that Ned Hallowell, who is the one who coined the term ADHD— Ned has argued exactly what Scott just argued, that he believes that ADHD is actually an evolutionary development that makes people more flow-prone, more able to generate the hyperfocus needed for flow. I don't know enough to speak learnedly on this. I really don't. I just found it very fascinating. And I will say as somebody who has attentional challenges, right? Depends on where you want to put that particular spectrum. Yeah. What I will tell you is that I think a lot of what we're doing when we talk about things like lining up intrinsic motivation, you know, the work that we do at The Collective in terms of aligning curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery, pointing in the same direction, using cognitive reframing to find autonomy and things like that, what we're doing is basically creating conditions that say whoever you are, if you reframe this possibly, you can end up with that hyperfocus, right? We know, for example, autonomy and attention are coupled systems, right? We've known this since the 1990s. So, I think a lot of sort of not the workflow per se but a lot of the work I cover like in the first section of "Art of the Impossible" on the motivation stuff, is about how do you align intrinsic goals and intrinsic motivators in this way. So, if you are neurodiverse, this is how you play these games and this is how you can be effective. Rian, what do you think? I agree.

I mean, I think the research I've seen on flow and ADHD shows that heightened focus is possible for people with ADHD, but it's modulated by interest. Interestingly enough, so when there's interest that captures attention, the attention that gets captured is more intense than someone without ADHD, but it's the capturing of the attention in the first place that often is so difficult for people with ADHD. It's harder to channel, but once it is channeled, from what I've seen research-wise, it can be more significant, the amount of focus. I actually used to know a lawyer, interestingly enough. She had really, really severe ADHD, and she used to get into these 24-hour flow binges working on case law to the extent they were so intense that she ended up having bladder issues because she wouldn't go to the bathroom for 24 hours sometimes because she would be so absorbed. Her susceptibility to absorption was so high. So, just one interesting extreme. —example of that. Really fascinating. So we've got the most upvoted question here, which is a simple one, but lots of good things to say on this, I'm sure. What's the difference and/or similarities between mindfulness, flow, and transcendence? And so I think we've kind of touched on differences between flow and transcendence, so let's talk about differences between mindfulness and flow and transcendence.

Can I close the thing on the neurodiversity thing for a second? Because the really interesting thing is like even people on the autism spectrum, when you get them in flow, I won't say they're more likely to get in flow, but if you can use flow as an intervention, so you get them into flow, a lot of their tics and insecurities and things that as neurotypical people that they would call awkward tend to disappear, just completely evaporate because they have areas of special interest. And this relates to what you were saying. A lot of people with autism, if you get them talking about their area of special interest, it could be a really, really narrow thing like magic card game or whatever, but you ask them, what's your favorite magic card? Once they start, you get them started and they're talking about it and they get in the flow state, a lot of their tics disappear and a lot of the characteristic symptoms of autism disappear. So I think really flow is a really undervalued intervention tool.

Scott, do you want to take it from on the differences or distinctions between mindfulness and transcendence? Well, I was—

that's an interesting question because I was actually going to ask Stephen what he thought of the difference between mindfulness and flow, because a lot of people— no one's been able to crack that nut. Like, people have written papers on it.

Yeah, I disagree. I think a lot of people have cracked— I don't think this is even a question anymore.

Tell me the answer then. I missed the memo.

So, well, it depends on whose work on mindfulness you want to draw on. But, for example, if you look at Judson Brewer's work at Yale and what he was looking at in the brain, one of the interesting differences is in the medial prefrontal cortex, which becomes, in a lot of flow experiences, becomes very, very active, whereas you get most other parts of the prefrontal cortex falling away. And, in mindfulness, the medial prefrontal cortex gets very quiet. So, why would it be active in flow and inactive in meditation? It's because one of the things the medial prefrontal cortex does is creative self-expression. Flow is a creatively self-expressive state, always. That's what it is. In mindfulness, you are trying to get past the self. But let me take this one step further. We can talk about mindful-based stress reduction or any of those things, but if you go back to the wisdom traditions, right, and want to talk about like Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, their purpose of their meditations are to make you aware of awareness, to be aware that there is a field of neutral awareness that exists behind your consciousness. Now, an argument can be made this is exactly what flow gives you. It's the same thing. The self gets shut off and you get to sort of perceive the world with the self dialed down. That seems to be very similar. So the things are the same. The difference seems to me about creative self-expression and does the self disappear or do you need part of the self for what you're doing? But neurobiologically, this is why I say I think the question question has been answered. Neurobiologically, we've seen differences in the brain between flow and mindfulness experiences. But I think you hit on it really well at the beginning where you said, hey, these are spectrums of experiences, right? Flow is a state. Mindfulness is a practice, right? There's no state of mindfulness. We're not talking about that. And if you go into any of Well, if you go into any of the traditions of mindfulness, they have different words for it, right? And essentially, mindfulness is a rough translation of the Tibetan word for meditation, which basically means just studying the mind, paying attention to the mind. The goal of mindfulness is to watch how the brain works. How do you think? In Tibetan Buddhism, you're mindful because you want to see things like your biases get attached to thought, right? Most people don't realize that you can have a thought not separate from when it gets— when your biases get attached to it, when all those other things happen. That's what mindfulness gives you. That's very similar to the same state you're getting to in flow, but because flow serves a different purpose, we don't tend to notice the same things. But I do think those questions have been answered, and I think the only people who are willing to have the discussion, who are having these discussions out loud— I think psychologists love these discussions because they're still using language that is essentially metaphorical, and neuroscientists will look at it and go, "Okay, well, let's talk about mechanism." And if you want to ask Andrew Newberg these questions, he's going to talk about different parts of the brain coming on and off and the spectrums of absorption and spectrum of how much is the self-present, right? We talk about— here's another one— in the transcendent experience catalog, there's experiences like flow where you have total sense of control, and then there's on the other side, experiences like speaking in tongues, trance states, possession states. These are legitimate altered states of consciousness where there are changes in the brain where you lose all control. It feels like somebody else is running the show. You're no longer in charge. There's a bunch of these spectrums under the heading of mystical experiences or transcendent experiences and things along those lines. But mindfulness and flow is like apples and oranges. It'd be like comparing the process that we use to get into flow. Flow triggers to flow. You could say, well, what's the difference between mindfulness and a bunch of flow triggers? That's a great conversation. Okay, we can have that conversation. But mindfulness and flow, one's a state, the other's a process.

That's very interesting. I mean, couldn't one make that— just play devil's advocate— couldn't one view mindfulness as getting into the flow state of the contents of that flow state as your own self? So it's actually like, it's an interesting state of consciousness where you're actually like deeply in flow witnessing your own self-thoughts?

That's actually a really interesting point, Scott. Actually, there's a paper on this that asks that exact question whether the activity that gets you into flow could be the witnessing of stimuli that you do in mindfulness. It argues that that can't be the case because the witnessing of conscious stimuli decreases absorption, which is obviously one of the characteristics of flow, and it increases sort of metacognition.

That's why you find that neuroscience differentiation between those two mental states. That's why. But just conceptually, it seems like that's what it is. It seems like you're getting into— but maybe we don't want to use the word flow for that. But I just asked the question just out of sake of stimulating conversation.

Is there a neurological signature for self-actualization or transcendence, do you believe?

I do think there is for self-transcendence. I do. And I think that Andy Newberg has done some nice work on that, showing our whole sense of perspective stemming from the self. Everything's rotating around the self. You know, it really changes your perspective. You're not— you're suddenly not from Earth anymore looking up at the stars. You're suddenly the sun looking down at Earth. It's like, what the hell just happened? But self-actualization, now that's an in more— that's a— I would argue that's a more interesting question in a way, because that's— no one's really fully cracked that nut. The neuroscience of self-actualization, you could see how when there are certain states that we're in where we're moving in the direction of what's really truly good for the organism, it would be really fascinating to see if that's associated with certain, a certain neural imprint. Wouldn't that be cool?

Yeah, super cool. Yeah, it's super cool.

Like if we had some sort of meter eventually someday where we could actually like do an EEG and it's like, it's a beeps. Yes, you're moving in the direction of of personal growth. Or like, no, no, that's not— like, do not pick her to go on a date with, that's not growth, you know. Or like, whatever is— don't eat that food, that's not going to give you self-actualization. That would be really amazing. Maybe even through machine learning, you know, it sounds like I'm being cheeky, but you could see a universe in which, you know, you do a longitudinal study with machine learning or whatever, and you start to like learn certain patterns of the individual, of the moments, and what what the consequences are when they move in certain directions of growth versus other directions of growth. You could sort of see kind of that kind of study. We need funding for it.

Yeah, no, I mean, not like, you know, if self-actualization and transcendence is this sort of stabilization of the oceanic boundless experience, right? Like the border between self and other becomes much more fluid and porous. And this again, back to Andy Newberg's work, And somebody, by the way, in the questions, this is the same answer. Somebody wanted to know more about the neurobiology of possession experiences and speaking in tongues experiences. I can't remember which of Andrew Newberg's books it's in. It's not the first. He talks a little about in the book he did with Eugene D'Aquilia, his very first book, The Mystical Mind, but it's some of his later books. I'm not, I'm not missing which one it is. He studied specifically speaking in tongues, which is a version of the possession experience. I want to pull back to the conversation we were having earlier about crystallized intelligence, crystallizing experiences, crystallizing experiences. So let me, let me frame this for people. This is a flow transcendence kind of question. When you're dealing with younger adults, teenagers, identity formation, There are certain experiences that happen, these crystallizing experiences that Scott's talking about, where you recognize yourself in the world. Like the first time I sort of read E. Cummings poetry, I— like, I didn't even know what I was looking at, but I knew I was a writer. Like, if this guy was a writer, I was a writer. I recognized myself in the thing I was looking at. That's a crystallized experience where you see something of yourself. Well, then it's usually usually, not always, but it's usually often underpinned by flow. And so my question to Scott was just what's the relationship between flow and crystallized experiences and how does he think about these things, especially in relation to self-actualization and transcendence?

Yeah. So the thing with the crystallizing experience is what is this moment where you encounter something and you're like, wow, that's me. You know, for me, like I remember when I was taking cognitive psychology in college and I came across Robert Sternberg's theories of intelligence, I was like, that's what I want to do with the rest of my life is study the science of intelligence. I mean, there was a specific moment and Howard Gardner calls that the crystallizing experience. Well, I think it's really cool that you link that to flow, Stephen, because I mean, I was locked in so much. There's something very poetic about that. It's almost like flow for life. There's a deep kind of flow associated with the crystallizing experience that kind of sets you off off in an instant for a life of flow. You know what I mean? There's something very profound about that.

That's exactly what I wanted to get at. When we have these crystallizing experiences, in a sense, it's the organism giving us the recipe or a recipe for flow. That's definitely one of the things that seems to be going on. You know what I mean? My crystallizing experiences were around things like action sports and writing, which remain my two greatest entranceways into flow, you know what I mean, that never changed. And I didn't know if that's just me or if that's everybody.

Definitely me too. But I think that throughout the ages, we'd write that about that in our book, Wired to Create. That's a very common, very common experience. And you link that to flow is quite brilliant, I think. Yeah. And there should be more research on that.

And it's got Choose Growth, the name of the book. Maybe you can tell us about the thesis of the book as well. Maybe it's a little early for that, but either way, let's define what you you mean by growth in the title? Sure.

How do you define growth? Well, this, this is a billion-dollar question. I mean, if you could know precisely what is— what are growth behaviors and what aren't, you know, within you, you could then hack your whole system and do that. But the point of life is it's a journey to find out what is growth for you and what isn't growth for you. And I think there are certain signs that you're moving in the direction of growth. I mean, Carl Rogers, who— the humanist psychologist who I draw on his work a lot, He argued for the OVP. He called it the OVP. Are you down with your OVP? Yeah, you know me. So anyway, the OVP stands for the Organis— Notorious SBK. Yeah, yeah. You ready for what the OVP stands for? It's a mouthful. Yeah, please. Organismic Valuing Process. Basically what he meant is that there are certain things we have built into all of us, a certain valuing process that allows us to know whether or not the actions we're engaging are good for the whole organism or not. You know deep down in your gut when you're being an asshole to someone. Like, you could justify it in a million different ways, but you're experientially— your organism knows. You know that if you're eating chocolate all night long and you're on— and you want to be on a diet, that you're not really— you know, you— again, you can justify it in a million different ways, but your organism knows. There are things that— yeah, what do you think, Stephen?

What I was wondering about is, where do you draw the line around the organism? Because there are a lot of behaviors that are sort of like, if I want to say the organism ends with Steven versus I'm a part of a global system with one planet and I'm part of an ecosystem, so I can do things that are good for Steven the organism and bad for the ecosystem as a whole. Right. And so what I was wondering about is that seems very selfish. In comparison to Maslow's ideas of self-actualization as bringing in others and the world, etc. Great point.

That's what I was thinking. But the fascinating kicker to this in terms of what the research shows that Sheldon— Kenneth Sheldon has shown over and over again is that when you make growth-oriented behaviors, the prosociality parts come along for the ride, like almost all the time. It's fascinating. You know, you didn't have—

that's the same argument I make about flow, right? You get the pro-social behaviors. Okay, all right, all right. Okay, I get that. So at least I'm gonna shut up because he's agreeing with me.

Yeah, he's agreeing with you. Lots of the whole nexus of correlations, um, key distinction between growth-oriented behaviors. And I mean, they've actually tested this. He's tested the OVP, the existence of the OVP. Does it really exist in humans? And he found that over time, people do course correct. People do start to make decisions that are more in line with growth, and they are averse to ones that are away from growth. It's a very optimistic view of humans. I understand that we don't always live up to this. But there are things that we know are helping us grow as a whole person and not just a narrow, narrow slice of us, help us grow to our fullest potential. And when we're moving into our fullest potential, we have lots of things that come along for that, like physiological things that make us feel more alive. You know, what are the things you engage in where you feel more vital, you feel more alive, you feel more generative, explorative, you know, that dopamine is really pumping, you know, you're like full of possibility, you know, versus what are the things you engage in that feel really good in the moment, but immediately you just want to sleep afterwards, you don't want to grow afterwards. So, we have these things built into us. Just how much do we listen to them is the question.

That makes sense. Two more questions from folks here and then we'll close out. Do peak experiences occur more frequently as you live a transcendent life or do they happen more at the beginning of that journey, perhaps related to a healing of sorts or restructuring of older neural pathways? I'll repeat the whole thing actually because there's a few bits to it. So, do peak experiences occur more frequently as you live a transcendent life? Yes. Do they happen more? Yes.

Beginning of that, we've just answered that first one. Or, or more the beginning within the second part.

Do they happen more at the beginning of that journey, perhaps related to a healing of sorts or restructuring of older neural pathways?

Well, sort of similar with, with some of the, the meditative paths. Certainly in the beginning on a flow path, you get bigger highs. The flow high is bigger and can be much bigger. I think over time you have more flow states, but they're not like the huge spectacular fireworks you used to get in the beginning. And it's not because you can't get there, it's because you choose not to ride the high that high because it's very expensive for the organism to get there. You have those kinds of flow experiences and then you do what Scott said, you go home and sleep for like 2 days and there's not a whole lot of growth. So, I I think some of what happens as we progress on this path toward— with flow, towards transcendence, all that stuff— is the lows are less low and the highs are less high. This is what people talk about as the middle path. And that sounds like you're sacrificing quality of experience for some kind of like mediocrity. And that's actually not it at all. Those less high states, I think, become equally, if not more rewarding, but they're— the pyrotechnics are quieter, I think. Does that make any sense?

Basil called it the plateau experience. Yeah. And he said, he said it's like you're lounging in heaven but not getting so excited about it. Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct.

Yeah, that's that. Yeah, exactly. I think you move more towards that. Big mystical experiences, those big big flow state experiences, they're exhausting. They just are. You can't shatter the self that completely without it sort of having a cost over time, I think.

That's exactly right. And this links to this conversation— we're both interested in fear of death, this discussion we were talking about back channel before this. When Maslow, the last 18 years of his life, he experienced a heart attack and he knew he was going to die he could die any second, you know, again, you know, not again, he didn't die, but he had a heart attack, he was in the hospital, he knew that the real one, you know, the one that kills him could come at any time. And he called that the postmortem life. And he described that postmortem life as the most transcendent time period of his whole entire life. And he said that the plateau experiences is where it was at that gave him that transcendence, not the peak experiences. That was what was a big insight in his life the last the last 18 months or so of his life. And, he argued that everyone should be able to die and then come back and have a postmortem life that they would all feel the highest heights of transcendence imaginable. I love that, Scott.

Here's an interesting question. Would it be fair to say that transcendence comes and goes as has been emphasized with flow or is it fully stable? So, I think that you feel free to speak more broadly the kind of permanence of transcendence. Can you regress and kind of slow back down? 100%. Speak to that, Scott.

Well, yeah, because that's life. Life is like Maslow said, it's like two steps forward, one step back dynamic of development. Okay, just to give an example, you can go to the top of the Himalayans and become a monk and avoid all humans and everything and come down feeling enlightened. And then, the first moment you reconnect with your mother starts yelling at you, "Why didn't you do the dishes? You're back." So look, life is— you could try to avoid life your whole life, but is that really fully living? I think to fully live means to regress. You can call it regression, or you can just call it jumping fully into the stream of life.

Let me see, I've got one final question here. So where does awe fit into transcendence, assuming that the definition of awe is that sense of being small yet interconnected to something larger? Larger than ourselves.

Where does all fit into transcendence, right? I mean, I view it on the continuum. It's in my continuum. It's there. It's next to, uh, inspiration. I believe the close cousin is inspiration, but it's not exactly the same thing. And it's to the right of gratitude. So it's in between gratitude and inspiration in my model. I, I created an all-experience questionnaire that has various characteristics of all that I argue differentiate it from other kinds of self-transcendent experiences. But it's definitely a self-transcendent experience in my model. It does satisfy those dual requirements that they all satisfy, but then they all have add-ons that are different. But the two are, you know, reduced sense of self as well as a connection with the world at large. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Stephen, have you seen any literature, or do you have any thoughts thoughts on whether awe may trigger flow or assist in triggering flow?

So I think awe is always present in flow. I actually think the state of awe, once we get precise sort of neurobiological definitions of it, and I know Scott's done a lot of work on here, I think that view, let's say there's a view, a perspective that I think it's built in as part of flow state. And it's, you know, when we say things like flow improves ecological awareness, right, our ability to see and perceive the natural world, and that's a regular part of the flow experience, that's the awe side of it. Like, that's what Scott's talking about exactly. So I think awe as an experience is always, in a sense, the neurobiologically contained within a flow state. I think it's a question of of where are you putting your attention. When you're having an awe experience, you're looking up at the night sky and you're contemplating the vast— that could be a flow experience as well as an awe experience. But I think in flow, you might take it— I mean, you might not, but you might take it farther and try to turn that experience into creativity. Whereas in an awe experience, you might just merge with the sky and feel that oneness, whereas in flow, you might I want to write a song or a poem about it. And I could be really wrong here, and I'm playing fast and loose with a bunch of definitions to get us out on time. But that's really beautiful.

Well, you know, it's really interesting that some people describe awe as reverence or the add-on. You know how I said some of these self-transcendent experiences have add-ons or unique flavors to them? What would be the unique flavor of awe? Well, it might— it seems to be this interesting mixture of emotions that don't tend to get mixed together, which is fear and reverence mixed in with wonder. Wonder, and contemplation, like trying to assimilate something that doesn't immediately assimilate into your schemas, your everyday schemas. So, that's a very unique—

Yeah. And, off of what you just said, normally the organism, and it's because norepinephrine covers these systems, we either feel curiosity or anxiety. It's an either-or. And, if you look into the great Temple Grandin's work, she talks about how most mammals animals until you sort of get into the higher social mammals and humans, it's either or. They either feel anxiety or curiosity. It's only in the higher mammals and humans that you start to get both at once. And awe is, as Scott just pointed out, is an extreme example of this. And in a sense, it's basically the ability to hold both sides of norepinephrine in your head at once without getting shifted to one or the other, anxiety or curiosity. It's the ability to stabilize both. And, there must be something neurobiological going on that allows us to stabilize this in the awe experience, I would guess, but I don't know what that would be.

Great answer, guys. Appreciate that. Final question for you, Scott. So, one of the questions Stephen constantly gets is, "What are the 3 things I can do Monday morning to get more access to flow?" So, I'm curious for you, what are 3 things people can do either tomorrow morning or next Monday morning to really start moving toward self-actualization and transcendence? Well, I have—

I do outline 7 principles of becoming a whole person in my book, which are actually forming the foundation of a self-actualization coaching program I'm developing. But some of those— so 3, let me just see if I can pick out 3 from that 7. And a big part of self-actualization is getting really comfortable with your dark side and integrating it. And I would meditate on the areas of yourself that you're most shameful of and meditate on the areas of yourself that you really hide under the rug the most and you don't even want to confront. And I would argue, practice the art of confronting it with deep meditation and let it lose some of its power. And let it harness the dark side. You know, let it, let it integrate. We'll have some exercises on that in the Choose Growth book coming out this year. So get comfortable with your— or harness the power of your dark side. I would also really get deeply in touch with your values and your goal structure. Like, really write out your goal structure, like starting with like the top-level dream, top-level goal, down to the middle level of goals that are supporting that, that you also do in your life, and then how how you're realizing each of those goals in the middle. You can really come up with a whole goal structure and really plan out your life. Like, think thoughtfully through how are all these things feeding into each other for that top-level goal. Just see that you make sure that you're constantly choosing growth, right? You're kind of constantly choosing that top-level goal that you have. And then the third one would probably be to inject more fun into your life. I think we underestimate the extent to which Fun can help.

Was that your Sesame Street voice? Maybe. Is that your Sesame Street voice? Oh, uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Not quite sure what that voice was, but I think that was my Yoda. It is. Now you do Yoda. Yeah. Now all things descend towards Yoda.

Fun you have. And you know, you have fun. And I just think that there's a big part of self-actualization that is— I mean, I know we talked earlier, are there states that are like aimless? Really, can that be possible considering we're cybernetic systems? I think that's an interesting intellectual question, but I do think that we can get darn close sometimes to a certain state where the outcome or the goal is unpredictable. At the very least, you have not consciously set out the goal for yourself, and have some fun in life with that to open yourself up to new possibilities. And wherever things go, let it emerge naturally. Set some time in your life for unpredictable play. Super.

Thank you, everybody, for attending.

See you all soon. Bye-bye. All righty. Bye.

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