The Neurobiology of Love: How Love Impacts Peak Performance & Growth with Dr. Patricia Van Pelt

What do we need flow for if we're not going to get out of the ordinary? We need flow to do the extraordinary. The greatest tragedy of life is not death, but rather it's a life without a purpose. I think the biggest problem that we have as a species is that we keep waiting for someone else to let us know what we can do when we have so— we have so many powers within us, all of us. And that it's important that we push ourselves and get into that, that position where trigger those, those flow triggers so that we can get in that position and be able to open the world up. Because that's what happens when you get into flow. The world opens up, and all of a sudden you're one with the universe, and all of a sudden there's no lack, there's no time, there's no resource lack, there's no time lack, there's no time. There's just you and this solution that's in front of you. And that is a very powerful place to be. When my senator quit, people wanted me to be the senator. And even though the Democratic Party appointed a different person, I just waited a year and I ran against her, and I was able to beat her by 12 points. And that was because people heard my voice, that I was carrying their voices. I wasn't talking about my dreams, my vision. I was talking about their dreams, their visions, their hopes for their families. That is what I'm calling the neurobiology of love.

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All right, so we have Dr. Patricia Van Pelt, better known as Dr. Pat, on the, on the podcast today. Welcome, Dr. Pat, um, and thank you so much for— yeah, thank you so much for being here. Um, this is our new segment, it's our, uh, client spotlight where we get to showcase world-class performers in the Flow Research Collective community and You are definitely that. Just for a little bit of background for our listeners, you are an Illinois state senator, an evangelist, entrepreneur, an author, a real estate developer, a certified public accountant, and co-founder and president of Wakana for Life LLC, and founder and CEO of Diamond Seven Enterprises LLC. Before that, you served as the founding CEO of a successful social movement organization where you served for 15 years. You teach the Advanced Life Series on wealth, health, and love, and Soulmate Attraction for Christian Singles. And you're also currently on tour with your Getting to the Top: Opening New Pathways to Your Ultimate Success live conference. Notably, you hold a doctorate degree in management of nonprofit agencies. You completed a dissertation on the study of social movements and revolutions.

So cool.

And not to mention, you've also completed every single one of our courses at the Flow Research Collective, from Zero to Dangerous to Flow Trainer Accelerator to Climbing Mount Bold or High Flow Leadership. So you're a rock star in our community, and thank you so much for joining us.

Well, I'm very happy to be here, excited about it. I love the High Flow Leadership Institute. I love the work that you are doing. It's powerful and it's very necessary.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, I thought we'd dive in just at the start. We talk about challenge and struggle being vital to get to flow, right? So can you tell us just a little bit about your story and some of the adversity and challenges that you've experienced and overcome to get to where you are today?

Well, thank you so much for that question, Dr. Torrey. One of the major challenges I had was getting over my past because I were— I got in church when I was 21, and I studied with the church for 40 years, which is a very, very long time. It took me running for office to get outside of that bubble, right? Because then I began to understand that how what we have been learning about God valuing his people, we kind of like turned it inward to the people that were part of the congregation or similar congregations, never really looking outside and seeing that, hey, This whole world is part of God's congregation, and we have a responsibility to everyone. And so that's one of the biggest struggles I had because of all the teaching I had that kind of like kept me from being able to think outside the box like that. But I had to go— what I had to do was go alone. I couldn't think that I could just take everybody with me. I just had to go alone and prove to people that this was the right way to go. And I'm happy I did it.

Absolutely. And so I'm hearing struggle often requires bravery, right? And, and resilience and grit.

Absolutely. It takes grit, bravery. You correct. Because what do we need flow for if we're not going to get out of the ordinary? We don't need flow to do the ordinary, right? We need flow to do the extraordinary. And that's what my goal is and my dream. I've always said for years, ever since— maybe I can think back to, um, since I was maybe in my 20s, I said I wanted to help solve a world problem. Not the world's problems, but a world problem. That was in my mind is what I wanted. Every time I get in groups and they talk about what they really wanted, what they really want, mine was always out the box because I wanted to solve a world problem. It wasn't a car, it wasn't a house, it wasn't more money. It was solving a world problem. And the reason why is because I felt, even as a youth when I was just 10 years old, I felt that I had a responsibility to the world, that there was something that I needed to bring to the world to help people get to the top of life, to achieve success and to be more. And that was long before I even got in church. I had that in me. So my life has been a struggle to get there. And I can say, thankfully, the High Flow Leadership Institute has played a major role in helping me connect some of those dots.

Thanks for that. So something that I think is so incredible about your story— so we were talking the other day and you were telling me a little bit about your first exposure to flow, where you saw flow first. And you were just saying, you know, you had, you had this sense of purpose as a 10-year-old. Can you tell us a little bit about where you saw flow first and how that, how that brought you to that purpose?

Yeah, I think that the major— when I look back now and think about what it was that really got my attention, it was my mother. Because my mother not only had a tremendous struggle to raise us, but she was also engaged in community affairs, fighting for rights. She was doing marching and, you know, and going up to the school and protesting. And she was just very engaged, a very engaging kind of person. And it made me believe that I could do more. So at 10 years old, that's when I kind of like realized that, you know what, you have a role too. You have a responsibility too. And because when I was 8, My dad and my mom, they normally would go out every morning and paint houses, and then my dad would drive a cab at night, and, and that's how they took care of all 7 of the children. But one night my dad was in a horrible, horrible, horrible car accident, and he ended up with brain damage, broken bones. He never could function again properly. So my mom was left with 7 children, a 6th grade education. In her 20s. She was like 25 years old with a husband that had brain damage. So for most, to most people, they felt it was okay for her just to go into a, you know, a hole and just try to survive. But my mom said, no, I'm not, I'm not going into a hole. I'm not going to sit back and just wait 8 to 10 years. She said, I'm going to bring my children out of these projects because we were in the notorious Cabrini-Green projects. Which was the worst projects in Chicago. And my mom said, no, I'm getting my children out of here and I'm gonna cast a vision for them about what success really is. And not only for me, but for anybody who's willing to listen. So, and though that's when I— and my mom said that because she had a couple of start and goes, start and goes, because my dad, when she would start going back to school, my dad would stop taking his medicine and would start having emotional mental problems as a result. So she constantly had to stop and go, stop and go. Finally, she sent him to live with his mother so his mother could take care of him so she could go on back to school and finish school. And so when she went to become— she decided she was going to be a nurse. They told her, you need to lose 35 pounds. She was wearing 165. They said, you need to be 125. So, uh, she didn't take that as a no. She just went home and lost 35 pounds and went back. So she did— nothing was going to stop her because as far as she was concerned, we were her sacred mission. She had a mission that was to bring us out of those projects, and nothing was going to stop her. So she ended up going, finishing school, got an 8th grade diploma, and within these 5 years, she got an 8th grade diploma, a college GED, she got a college degree, she landed a great job, got promoted as supervisor, and moved all of her children out of poverty within 5 years. Now, this was a 25-year-old woman with 7 kids raising them by herself.

Wow.

Okay. And, and when I asked my mom, what— I mean, what was your plan B? I mean, what— did you have a backup plan? What if this didn't work, this big undertaking that you were planning to take? She said there was no plan B. There was no not be able to do this. There was no failure. It was just one thing, and that was the sacred mission. And I just felt like— she said she felt like somebody was guiding her steps, every step. Go this way, do this, do that. And she was able to get all the way to the top like that. And when she had gotten her back up against the wall at the end of the last part of that 5 years and she couldn't get us out of the projects, even though she saved money and everything and did everything she could, she didn't have enough money. So she wrote the President of the United States of America. Now, how many people living in Cabrini-Green projects was going to write the president, right? Yeah, right. So of course he didn't answer the first one. So she sent a second letter, and this time she talked about his speech because he talked about how people need to be off welfare. It was Richard Nixon, President Richard Nixon, saying people need to be off welfare and all this. And she wrote back, I think people need to be off welfare, and I'm on welfare. I have 7 children, and I've got to get my kids out of these projects. I need help. I need to get in a home for my kids. And that time he wrote back, his office wrote back and told her about a program. 4 months later, we was living in a very prestigious community. I mean, we had ice cream parlors, pizza parlors, we had all kinds of shopping centers, everything, things we had never experienced in Cabrini-Green or even before that. So she took us on a, she took us on a journey in those 5 years, and I watched her in those 5 years. That's what made me know it was possible to do all kinds of things that people say was impossible.

I was just going to say, talk about mastering the art of the impossible. Your mom had it down. And we, and we talk all the time about the power of mindset and how critical it is to have this wide open belief spotlight, because you tend to generate more possibilities, you see more potential courses of action. Like, why not, you know, write a letter to the president? You know, how do you think, you know, it sounds like your mom really modeled that growth mindset and that wide open belief spotlight. How do you think that's impacted your evolution professionally and personally?

Very much so, because it made me understand that nothing was impossible, that any challenge that I was facing, I could overcome it. My mom read a lot of books, and she just believed that what she saw in the books, she could have in her own life. So she read books all since she was little, you know, but she dropped out of school at 6th grade because she had all these children already. She had— I think she had 4 of us by then. I mean, not— no, not 6th grade. She got pregnant maybe around 8th grade because she was 13. She had her first child and she continued to have children. But she never stopped reading and she never stopped believing that she could have more. So not only was she able to go to school and do all that and get this job and then move us all out of the projects, she also marched with the civil rights movement and protested. And, you know, she had time for all of this. She said it just all fit and she just was able to do everything and make it do that. So. It's powerful.

So powerful. And I think that, you know, that brings us to another piece, I think, of the puzzle that we've been talking about. And obviously it plays a huge role in your life, and that is purpose, right? So I saw the mantra on your website is "Rise to your purpose because life is way too short to live without purpose." So as you know, a big piece of what we do at FRC is helping people identify their massively transformative purpose. So I was hoping maybe you would share your massively transformative purpose with us, uh, and tell, tell us a little bit about how that plays a role in your work.

Yes, well, Miles Monroe, great preacher, uh, he's passed now, but he, he had a statement that said— he, he made the statement saying the greatest tragedy of life is not death, but rather it's a life without a purpose. Said, that's the greatest tragedy. And even at 10 years old, I felt emptiness because I felt like there was something I needed to be doing to make life better for people. And I wept. I would weep about that because I, I cried about the conditions that we lived in versus the conditions that I saw on television, how things were so different on television than they were in my, in my life. And so when you don't have purpose, you wander around trying to find something that's meaningful, something to attach to that's meaningful so that you can feel like you, you're alive or you, you're here for a reason. So my— always been, uh, as far as I can remember back, is wanting to solve a world problem. But as I was moving into the, the High Flow Leadership Institute trainings, I had my mind start going, going toward love, how that If we are gonna regain mastery over life, my whole thing is help people regain mastery over life so that we can solve all kinds of problems that we face and not find ourselves hiding in caves trying to, you know, ignore the problems, but actually come out and, and deal with the problems. Uh, I was watching this movie, uh, sometime back with Anthony Hopkins, and I can't remember the name of it, Richard Gere, but it was a bear that was chasing them and the bear was trying to kill him. And so Richard Gere was like, oh, what are we going to do? This bear is going to kill us. He's not going to stop chasing us till we kill him. And the African said, no, we got to kill the bear. He said, we got to kill the bear. He said, kill the bear. How can we kill the bear? Really? Well, that's the way I see that with purpose is that we have to deal with the challenges in front of us, not hide from them, not ignore them. So regaining mastery over life, um, really requires that we go to our— what some people call the highest emotion, but I'm going to say the most sacred value. Because I think that when we start talking about selfless love, because that's what I'm talking about, really using love to help guide us to solve these problems, is more than an emotion. Love is an emotion like romantic love or lust or long-term love, which Helen Fisher calls attachment. It's more than that. It's a sacred value. It's a value in our heart that we love people, that we love each other, because we realize— I realize that I am one with everything. I'm one with the bugs. I'm one with the evil man down the street. I'm one with the good man on the other end of the street. I'm everybody and everything. So I need to— I have to bring myself up to a level to be able to love everybody in every situation that I'm in. I don't weep when I go through hard trials. I just understand that they're part of me, the journey for me to get where I need to go. So I'm not afraid to be face to face with some type of confrontation. Well, a lot of people don't want confrontation. I have no problem with it because I realize I have somewhere to be. I have an appointment and I got to get there. And that appointment is to help people remember how to use the power of love to solve all kinds of persistent problems.

And I think, you know, you One of, one of the many amazing things about you is that you have such clarity on this purpose. And it, you know, if you look at your, your journey professionally, you can see that purpose show up time and time again. Um, can you talk a little bit about how, how this purpose has evolved and how it's helped you with how that clarity has really helped you just consistently overcome obstacles?

Right. And like I say, one of the probably biggest obstacles for me was my teaching, the way I perceived the teaching, what it meant in the church in those 40 years. And I'm still a part of the church, I love the church, but I realized that if we are going to succeed and fulfill the purposes of God, we got to live according to the word of God. We can't make up stuff, okay? We can't have traditions, talk about this is it. That's not it, OK? So I'm not afraid to speak out about it. And for some people, they get uncomfortable. So going through these challenges, one of the things that I can really point to is when I ran for office. When I first ran for mayor of the city of Chicago— you probably don't know about that. But I ran for the mayor of the city of Chicago before I ran for the Senate. And I ran for mayor because I felt that this is one of the biggest races that was going on. The world was watching it because Chicago is a big— it's a world city, basically. And all of the candidates were talking about making Chicago, you know, taking Chicago to the next level and achieving just great things with Chicago and all that. Nobody was talking about the challenges of everyday people, the struggle that people had, that when their kids couldn't go out to play, where 3 of the high schools, like in my district, 3 of the high schools in my district have 80%, 100% chronic truancy. Kids don't want to go there because they're afraid, and they can't play outside, they can't take a walk. I mean, we have food deserts. To me, if we're talking about bringing Chicago up, we need to be bringing the whole city up and not ignore the fact that we have a group, a large percentage of Chicago, that is suffering in a different— living in a different world than everybody else is in Chicago. It's a tale of two cities. So I ran to carry that voice into, into the marketplace. And so that's what gave me the strength to do it, because who runs a race and nobody knows you, right? You running for mayor and I'm in a race with all these famous people. All these famous people are in the race and then Patricia. And quite naturally, my people were like, what are you doing? Who are you? You know, because it's like, we know you, you're not the mayor. Okay. But I felt I had to because people needed to hear their voices. Out there in the discussion about improving Chicago and improving the world. And I didn't win that race, thank God. I shouldn't be the mayor anyway. It's too much work. I pray for the mayor all the time. But the next day, my senator quit. And because I had such name recognition, 66% name recognition at that point, when my senator quit, people wanted me to be the senator. And even though the Democratic Party appointed a different person, I just waited a year and I ran against her and I was able to beat her about 12 points, 12 points total in one, one area, 8 points in the other side. So I got— was able to really just win that race by a landslide. And that was because people heard my voice, that I was carrying their voices. I wasn't talking about my dreams of my vision, I was talking about their dreams, their visions, their hopes for their families. That is what I'm calling the neurobiology of love, which is what I'm teaching on now. It's about how you can use the power of the neurobiology of love to really help people see and feel you and give you— also give you access to information that you otherwise wouldn't have if you hadn't opened yourself up to love. Now, for some people, that's very painful, painful thought to think that, you know, I'm going to love everybody. But for me, I've learned that it's the most valuable feeling I can have is to love every single person. And so because of that, I was able to work with transsexual people. That was something I would never have been able to work with, transsexual people, you know. I was able to work with Muslims, I work with atheists, people from all walks of life, all ethnicities, because all of them are me and I am all of them. And I recognize that, and I love me and I love them. So that's how I've been, that's how I've been able to operate in all these spaces. And even when we get down to the Senate, there are votes that people said, I know you're not going to vote yes on that, you know, because that's not— that's not abortion, or having— being able to have an abortion, being able to have, uh, for a child to be able to get an abortion. All these things like this, they think that I shouldn't vote on them, but I vote on it because I don't represent these people as a preacher. I'm not their preacher, because if I was their preacher, they could come to church. I'm their representative, so I carry their voices into government. So it's not my will, it's their will that I carry. And if I would come to a point where I feel like I can't carry their voices, then it's time for me to resign because that's what they elected me for, carry their voices into government.

I just think it's incredible that this purpose of helping people and, and leading with love, right, starting from a place of love, has really propelled you to consistently put yourself in new and different situations, right? We talk a lot about really trying to ensure that you're always operating in that challenge-skill sweet spot where you're stretching yourself. And it feels like that's what you've done your whole career. It's even what you were talking about your mom modeled as well. Like, she was never done. So I guess this is a little bit of a— it's— I already know the answer to this, but are you done? Have you kind of reached the purpose, or what's next?

No, I got to spread the word. That's what I have to do. Let me just say that I already had this message about love before I got here, but I didn't understand the neurobiology of it. I did not understand flow. I did not understand how these things— this has given me a, a whole, uh, platform to build my conversations on because I've been able to tap into this next level of understanding of our physiology. And that's something I didn't have when I got here. That's what I took this class as, just because I like to learn things on the side. You know, I wasn't planning on using it for anything other than Just knowledge. Well, it was so good that I had to take the next one and then the next class, and I'm waiting for the next class so I can take that one too.

That's what we love to hear.

Yeah, because this is powerful information. I mean, it unleashes something within us. I could not do these, uh, unleashes a power within us to be able to see and do more. I could not run these conferences that I'm running across the nation right now if I hadn't taken this class, because what I teach is How to open new pathways to success, to your ultimate success. And when I'm talking about new pathways, I'm talking about, I'm talking about neural pathways, opening neural pathways, understanding how our emotions work, the role of emotions in our role. Because when we grew up, we, we tend to, wherever our emotions took us, that's where we went, right? But that's not me anymore. My emotions don't take me where I tell my emotions where to go, right? If they try to seep out and try to do something on their own, I putting them in check, putting them back in check, like, nope, that's not what we think, that's not how we feel. And I think the biggest problem that we have as a species is that we keep waiting for someone else to let us know what we can do when we have so— we have so many powers within us, all of us. And that it's important that we push ourselves and get into that, that position where trigger those, those flow triggers so that we can get in that position and be able to open the world up. Because that's what happens when you get into flow. The world opens up and all of a sudden you're one with the universe. And all of a sudden there's no lack, there's no time, there's no resource lack, there's no time lack, there's no time. There's just you and the solution that's in front of you. And that is a very powerful place to be. And a really good thing about this class is that they teach you how to come down out of flow. And they talk to you about the dark side of flow, which nobody talks about that. Nobody. All right, but the dark side of flow, I mean, oh my God, that was so inspiring to me because you can get this whole Messiah complex and start thinking that, you know, you're this person that has all this power and you can do all these things, and that's not love, that's pride, that's not humility, that's not meekness, that's the opposite, and that's not where we want to go. So true. So thorough in what you're doing here.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. Thanks for listening to Flow Research Collective Radio. Before we dive back into our conversation, there's something to consider. It may be that today we are under-challenged. We're drowning in comfort. Now, in his book Antifragile, statistician Nassim Taleb pointed out something that's of key importance. Quote: Undercompensation from the absence of challenge degrades the best of the best. The best horses lose when they compete with slower ones and win against better rivals. Now, put another way, who we could be, or our highest potential, is squandered by safety, coddled by comfort. If you want to train with us at the Flow Research Collective, it will require boldness. But what's life without a little adventure, right? To learn more about how you can get more flow in your life and achieve your professional and personal goals in less time and with more ease, Go to getmoreflow.com. If you're a good fit, we'd love to train with you. All the best.

Well, thank you. Well, thank you. Any, any tangible or concrete suggestions that you have for folks to kind of stay, stay on the bright side of flow and avoiding the dark side, but anything that you've done in particular that's worked for you?

Yeah. One of the things I learned here, um, because before I started, uh, the High Flow Leadership, the Zero to Dangerous, I had never meditated before. And Rian took us through a meditation, um, in the first week, and it just blew my mind of the things I was able to see when I meditated. I was shocked. And so I started teaching other people to use meditation because that's completely out of our— we don't— that's not something— that's not one of our tools, okay? We pray, we never meditate. So we always talking, right, but we're not listening. So that is one of the keys, really being able to understand the value and the power of quieting yourself and, um, and spending that time listening to your heart, you know, getting into your heart and listening to your heart. That's what keeps giving me the courage to keep going, because it is challenging when you face what you don't— with situations that you've never seen before. And you're trying to traverse this terrain that you've never been in before. It's really hard. But if you, if you take the time to go back into your heart and remember what your goal is and focus on that, it really gives you the impetus to take the next step and to believe that you can. So it's a powerful thing.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, we talked earlier about having the grit to do the uncomfortable, scary, challenging things. But I think, you know, in my coaching of folks in the community, we have so many high-performing people that recovery and being able to pull back and get out of the fight from time to time is also a grit skill, right? Knowing when to say yes and when to say hold on to the fight can be a real challenge as well.

Right. I used to take these power naps when I was on this one campaign that lasted 7 months and I had to work on to get this I was trying to get all these people to a level of success that they had never seen before, and I wanted them to see it just so they'd know it exists. Um, and I would take these 20-minute naps, power naps, to try to recover. But I tell you, at the end, I had— I didn't recover well at the very end because I didn't know what to do with myself. I was so full of, you know, I was so full of power that I didn't know what to do with myself. But coming through this class, the High Flow Leadership classes, we learned about recovery, what it means to recover. Now I go into float therapy. I go there, stand there 90 minutes, just letting myself come back to me. And also I spend time in my room alone with my headphones on, so I'm not getting anybody else's noise and just able to sit here and just relax and think and enjoy. Sometimes music is good for me, nice smooth music. But I know that I must come down because other than that, I'm gonna do something stupid, like eat too much food because there's nothing else to do, right? You just accomplished this big goal. So what are you gonna do? Oh, let's go eat and drink and eat and drink and eat and drink, eat and drink. That's not the answer. It's recover. Okay. Recover so you can function as a regular individual. So yeah, this is, this class is really good. And I, I really encourage everybody to take every single one of the classes because we are constantly growing if we are around people who are leading us to higher ground. And that's what I found here in this, in High Flow Leadership classes. There was always somebody there to lead us to a higher ground, a higher ground, higher ground, even getting down to a high flow performance body. I mean, who talks about a high flow performance body? Nobody talks about that, right? It's in this course, you know, high flow performance body, really getting your body to that place where you can actually function and do the things that you know you need to do. And that's about taking care of yourself, drinking water, sleeping, exercising, meditating, all those things. Spending time with family. I was not even spending time with family before. I would just work, work, work. But now I spend time with family.

I love it. I, I, you know, because it's one thing to have clarity of purpose and have this— I mean, you've really testified to the fact that when you have clarity of purpose, you have this limitless fuel source, right? Where you persist, you stay gritty, you welcome challenge. But I think that another thing to recognize for the FRC community is flow requires massive energy expenditure. We're using up a ton of important neurotransmitters. We need the neurobiological resources for flow. And that's why recovery is so important, that ability to pull back and reassess and refuel. So I love that that was a big message for you.

And another thing is humility, you know, that to really bring yourself down to be able to hear people, because you will get there and then you all— you've been having all the right answers, you've been able to say everything right and do everything right. I saw when I was running for mayor, I hit flow and met when I was running for mayor, and man, nothing could stop me. There was nothing they could say to me that I didn't know the answer to. The answer would just come, Dr. Torrey. I mean, I was afraid that they was going to put a microphone in my face and I was going to say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and not know what to say, right? Because I never ran for office. But I got into a level of flow when I became sure that this is what I was supposed to do. Once I understood that, there was nothing in my way. And I tell you, I had reporters with their lips quivering, not mine. It's because I was able to give them back things that they weren't even expecting. I was able to hear things and make connections and patterns and possibilities, and I was able to share that in a powerful way. And that's why when I ran for Senate, I had, I had to vote, okay? Even though the lady that was in, in that position before me had been in serving in office for 12 years in that area, I was able to beat her because people heard me when I spoke, and because I was in a— I was on another level. You have to go to another level. If you're going to do anything big. I always talk about Robert Keegan, Dr. Robert Keegan out of Harvard University. He's passed, but he wrote a book called In Over Our Heads. And he was saying that the problem is that we're trying to get people to solve problems that— and they're in over their head. They're not prepared to solve those problems. They're not prepared to deal with that reality. They're struggling through this situation, these situations, because they've never faced them before and they don't have the grit uh, to, to be able to come into that space and operate in that space. He said most people get stuck in the third order of consciousness because he talks about the five orders of consciousness. Of course, I think it's a sixth one, but anyway, we go with him. He's the Harvard professor. So he talks about the third order of consciousness, and I learned this in our classwork, uh, at High Flow Leadership. And he said the third order of consciousness is where most adults get stuck, where our life code is written upon us. And we are told what we can be, told what we can believe, told what we can hope for, what we can think. And we operate in that space and feel real good about it because everybody else is operating in that space. And if you try to leave that, that place, that island of ordinary people, you're going to be attacked. And I feel that over and over again. Attacks, attacks, attacks. Because I'm always leaving. Okay. I'm not going to stay there. Anywhere I am, I'm going to learn. If you can't keep leading me higher and higher, I'm leaving. Because I have to, I have to reach a place. I, I see it in my mind, uh, Tori, when I, when I meditate, I see it in my mind. I see that place, and I'm, I'm just hungering to get there. And I, and I know that— I actually know I'm there already. I just don't perceive it like that yet. My perception is not open enough, but it's going to open up more and more because I'm pushing in and not You bagging up, I'm pushing in. So yeah.

And that's something that immediately stood out to me in our first conversation is you are always hunting for ways to take things to the next level, right? To overcome the next barrier, to scale your impact, which I just think is so, so powerful. And I love what you were calling out, really the hallmarks of flow, right? That inner voice, that self-critic falls away. You see far more possibilities. Than you were before. And you don't doubt yourself, right? You're just in pure execution mode.

Beautiful. Like, nothing can get— nothing can stop you. What is failure? You don't even know what that is, you know. Just all you know is that not important. Yeah, this is what I'm going to get. Another point I want to raise I think is really, really important because I want to come back to that humility, because a lot of people don't recognize that when we get to a certain level, it's easy to start thinking that we're higher thinkers and higher beings than everybody else. And then we lose sight of ordinary people, which means we lose sight of who we really are, because these people are us. They're just us on a different level. So it's really important for us to open our ears to all kinds of people, whether they high on the totem pole or low on the totem pole, where they are, is really be open to everybody and to care about everybody the same and not treat them differently because they maybe in a higher level, quite naturally you're going to respect them because they've reached a higher level. But it's not a matter of disrespecting people who have it. So that's important. But I wanted to tell you this one statement that David Foster Wallace, uh, made. I love it. He said fiction is what it is to be a— he said an effing human being, but I'm not saying that part. So fiction is what it is to be a human being. And the reason why he said that is because we are manufacturing our reality. Every single day. So whatever it is that we think is happening is exactly what's happening. You know why? Because we're making it happen with our thoughts, right? So it's just so powerful.

Absolutely. The power of mindset. And so can you, can you speak to that a little bit? So, you know, the many hat— out of the many hats that you wear, one of them is as a coach. Um, how do you coach people to have this more expansive mindset where you're imparting this belief that all things are possible. How do you coach to that?

Well, one thing, we have the science. We have the science that's available to us that we can share. We know the science is behind what's really happening. We're way ahead of science because science got to figure it out. But we have the neurogenesis. We know that we can birth new neurons in our brain to make us be able to achieve more than we've been able to achieve in the past. We know we have neuroplasticity where we're able to reshape the neural pathways in our brain physically reshape our brains to be able to, uh, to do things that we maybe haven't been able to do in the past. We have mirror neurons, the ability to mirror other people's neurons. That's why I want to be around you, Dr. Torrey. That's why I want to be around Melissa. That's why I want to be around Rian. I want to mirror your neurons. I'm going to feel you, and I want to experience you, and I also want to think what you're thinking because you're on a higher level than I am, and that's where I'm going. So this is powerful, really powerful. Experience that I'm having, and I help people have that experience by helping them first. Really, the hardest thing is bringing them back to base, base zero. Who are you? Who are you? Most people have been everything to everybody and have failed to realize who they really are. So really getting down to who they are first and then starting to build them up from there. Because they have capacities that, you know, one of the things I use, uh, one of the stories I use in all my teaching, whether they're Christians or not, because everybody know Cain killed Abel, right? Everybody knows that. So yeah, Cain killed Abel. And what did he do after he killed Abel? Well, God banished him out of his presence. So what did he do? Did he go try to get Section 8? No. Did he go to a local shelter? No. Did he go beg on the corner? No. He went out and built a city and named it after his son. Now here's a man banished out of the presence of God, a murderer, a liar, a deceiver, banished out of the presence of God. He goes out and builds a city. You tell me what we're waiting for. What are we waiting for? Okay, if he can build a city, I can build a nation. Okay, he's not gonna build a city on my watch and I don't build a nation. Okay, so we have this ability to do so much more, but we have to awaken it, and we got to awaken it from ground zero, not from the in the middle, putting on top of all of our myths and traditions. I, you know, I helped them to destroy the myths and traditions, encourage them to buy the truth, pay the price for truth. That means sell something that you— that's not true, um, so that you can buy the truth and carry the truth with you. Because the truth is what's going to help you get to the next level, um, understanding who you are, what you have the capacity to do, what you've always had the capacity to do. And then, like I say, and we got the science now that can back us up on some of these things. So that's what I use in my coaching, help people achieve a higher level of success.

Yeah, that's amazing. And that's, that's so in alignment, honestly, with, with a big piece of what we do at Flow Research Collective is we, we help people identify what their intrinsic motivators are, right? Not the extrinsic, not the money and the status and the recognition, but truly What is your purpose? What do you care about? What are you curious about? What do you want to develop mastery in? What's important to you? Yeah, I think that that's such a, such a powerful place to start.

Yeah. And what, what are your values? What are your primary values? You, you'd be surprised how long it takes people to get down to what those are because they've lost them. They're buried down in there. And if something happens, they get triggered, but they don't— people don't know them, you know, surface thought. They don't know them in their mind. You know, they have to be brought to a process where they go through a— I take them through 300 values, tell them pick 30. Yeah, I haven't picked 10. And after they pick 10, I say, what are the 3 that you're willing to fight for and possibly even die for in order to live a life of dignity? That's when we get down to what they really, really want out of life.

Yeah, I love that. I think that— I think that's amazing. And that's, you know, we do— we do a similar exercise in High Flow Leadership, now Climbing Mount Bold, where I challenge people to— a value is not just a word, right? Define it, make it an actionable sentence that's going to guide your decision-making and how you look at different problems, how you tackle new situations, right? It's not, not just a word that's hanging out that might sound nice or look nice on a piece of paper. Make it meaningful. What does it mean to you?

Yeah, and you know, and that's what helped me to actually separate from my fiancé. Um, I— we were engaged for 3 years, and I was in a class, I was in a training, um, back in, uh, sometime back with Darren Hardy. And he said, if you don't like what's happening to you, happening to you, stop tolerating it. And so I said, I don't like what's happening to me with this relationship. So I knew, I said, now you met him, he was a multi-millionaire, he was, uh, had his own business gave me a $20,000 ring and just did all kinds of— gave me all kinds of money, do all kinds of things for me. But he was not giving me what I needed most. I needed somebody near me when I had my hardest times, and I needed somebody with me when I was going through my, my greatest times, my most successful times. He couldn't be there for my hurt. He couldn't be there for my success. So that let me know if I was to marry him, I would have to tolerate the fact that he wasn't going to be there in my hurt, my pain. He wasn't going to be there in my height, and I just refused to live like that. So one of my values is peace, and he was disrupting my peace, so he had to go. So I said, well, I might not meet anybody else for the rest of my life, but I'd rather live alone for the rest of my life rather than have my peace constantly being disrupted, because that was one of my primary values— my peace, my freedom to think, to move about, to learn, to, to to explore, and my spirituality. Those are the 3 things that I have to have. And if anybody's going to struggle with me about those, they need to be out of my life as soon as possible, because those are non-negotiables.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, we talked about it in, in one of our courses in Climbing Mount Bold, that having clarity on your personal values, your leadership values, and ensuring that you're living life in alignment with those in all regards because you can't be a different person personally than you are professionally. Your people will know. They'll see through that those are not actually your values. I think that being true to those, living your life in complete alignment, I mean, what a great model for your team.

Thank you. I think it's so important and I'm so glad it's part of the coursework as well. Helps us to really zero down on things that are important. That it can help us move forward on this journey if we had clarity about them. And that's one of the things about the clear goals to me that was really powerful, really getting down to those clear goals, knowing exactly what you're trying to do, what you plan to do, and how you going to do it. That was really powerful to me. I had never been, I had never even heard of hard goal, high hard goals. Mm-hmm. So getting my hard goal, you know, after my massively transformative purpose and my high hard goal, I listed 3 things that I want to happen within a year, and I had 2 of them I made so far. It looks like I made 2 of them so far. I got another one I'm like halfway there, but I'm looking forward to— if I had not even had them as goals, I would never have even got my mind in that place. I mean, I raised my income, I doubled my income. I had planned to triple it, okay?

Wow.

But I doubled it from this class, using this class, using my, my, um, my high, hard goals, um, I was in for massively transformative services and high, uh, massively, massively transformative purpose. And then the high, hard goals underneath, and then the clear goals. I was able to double my, my income in that year. And so now my husband think I'm supposed to double it every year, but like, you did it once, just bring it, you can do it again. Like, please, okay, give me time. Uh, but another thing is to be able to move out of the area that I'm in into another part of the country, which I had never even dreamed of, but I wrote it down as one of the things because I knew the kind of life I wanna live and it's not in a cold area like Chicago. Right. So, so yeah, this is good. It's been very good. It's a very, it's a good, if somebody wants to take a journey to a higher level of themselves to open their minds to the multitude of possibilities that's ahead of them, this course is the course for them.

I love it. And you know, this is why, this is why you are one of the massive rock stars of our community. So you've covered The importance of mindset, right? And having that expansive belief spot, like challenging limiting beliefs. So you keep saying yes to hard things, the power of having a massively transformative purpose along with that entire goal stack. What are your high hard goals all the way down to your clear goals? So you're, you know, that you're making consistent action towards that, towards your higher purpose, right? The importance of values. I mean, you, you've literally, you're covering all of the bases of the course. So it feels great. As one of the coaches to hear how you've really internalized all of these teachings. It's phenomenal. Anything, anything that we haven't touched on yet that you think, as a coach yourself, that people typically miss when it comes to peak performance?

Oh, when it comes to peak performance, I think that a lot of times what I find out with the people I work with, they're trying to have peak performance without doing the work, the foundational work. Without, you know, it's a stack. You got to stack it, right? You don't just jump out there and do it. It's got to be built on something. My mom, even when she was able to move into flow and perform like that, she had been reading. It was— she didn't read one book. She had been reading for years. And she said, I can have that life. She just never had a reason to. You know, I studied, uh, social movements, uh, in my dissertation. I did my dissertation on revolutions and social movements. And one of the things that I learned in social movement theory, which kind of aligns with, with the teaching I've gotten in flow, is that first of all, what you have to have if you're going to have a social movement, you got to have a collective understanding of the problem and a collective understanding of the solution. You gotta know what the solution is. You can't have 5 solutions to this one problem and then go after them. You know, you got to zero down. Okay, what is the problem? What is the massively transformative purpose that you're here for. And then, okay, what is the solution? Okay, here's the solution. Well, how do we, how do we accomplish those solutions? High, hard goals. You know, we, we identify those and then we get down to, uh, so it's really about clarity, getting down to clear goals, right? Because you have to have this collective understanding, you and the people that you're working with, of the problem and the solution. Well, when it comes to us, we need a collective understanding in our body, mind, and spirit, right, of what our purpose was here. We got to align that so we don't have emotions going here and words going there. All this stuff is aligned, right? And then number 2 is having a mobilizing body. In other words, that's the second part of a social movement theory is to have a mobilizing body, a group of people who have shared values, shared understanding about situations, who can take this idea on. And to me, we are that mobilizing unit. We have capacity. We have ability. We just need to bring it all in together and make this— hand this solution over to ourselves and ourselves to accept it. And then the third part of social movement theory is a political opportunity. You just need a crack in the system. That's it. A crack in the system. And all of a sudden, boom, you come out with all this power. And people are like, Wow, this peak performer, how did she achieve all this? Well, it wasn't just that she woke up one day and decided she was going to do it. She had alignment already with understanding, alignment with the problem, what the solution is. And the problem is she had the mobilizing body herself. She learned how to control herself, control her emotions, control her words, control her thoughts, control her reality. And then she had a political opportunity. Something happened. For her, my dad was in a terrible accident that opened up another world for her. She had— he hadn't passed, she'd probably still be toiling along, you know, along. But that happened and it opened the world up for her. And so that's the same way it has been with— for me, with business. I've been able to use the neurobiology of love in business, uh, politics, academics, social life, love, romance, all of that. I've been able to use it. Because I always go back, Dr. Torrey, to what is it that I really love? What is it that I must have? What is it that I must protect? And then from there, I go and carry that message through. And with that, I'm able to move, um, I'm able to move mightily and, and walk into this level of peak performance that few people, uh, understand is available to us.

So many, so many powerful strategies wrapped into that explanation. I really appreciate that. I, you know, something that jumped out at me immediately, though, was this idea that we shouldn't be expecting immediate results, this idea of getting away from instant gratification, that it is going to take work and time and consistently coming back to that work to make sure you're in alignment, to make sure you're in alignment with your values and your purpose. And that doesn't happen overnight or particularly quickly. And I think that's such a deterrent for so many people. They expect those immediate results instead of staying the course, and then you get those exponential results instead, right?

The opportunity to— for it to burst out of you, and you— it's already there. Just like Michael Jordan, he didn't just come out on the— out there and just start bouncing the basketball. He practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced, you know. He, he spent time learning about his body, what he needed to do and all that before he was able to achieve achieve out there on the, on that, on the field. So we have to understand that if we are going to have peak performance, we have to learn the journey first, learn the journey. And that's what this course does, this, all this coursework. That's why I took all 3 of the classes. It helped me learn the journey. I am so far ahead of my, where I was in just this little year and a half that has been since I've been in this class than I, than I, than I've ever had, ever been before. I've been able to take giant leaps. I learned about the meditation. I learned about the neurology and the neurobiology of how we're functioning, what's happening with my body, and how to control the triggering of neurotransmitters. I mean, I make those decisions now. The call comes from within the house. I make those decisions. And it, it was a time when I didn't know how to make those decisions. I didn't know what was happening to me. It just happened. But I learned this is such a powerful course for people who who know they have a massively transformative purpose, something to achieve that is no way possible for a natural man to even think he can achieve, they need to be here. This is the place.

I love it. Bring it. Come on. And I think I appreciate your insight that the course gave you the space and some guidance to think holistically about these concepts and what it is to be a peak performer and the different levers that we can pull. It also gives you the encour— they also give you the encouragement to actually create time and space to think about your purpose and what your plan is all about. What, to your point, learning the journey. Are there other things that you do aside from professional development and taking courses like those at Flow Research Collective? Are there other things that you do to make sure you're in alignment, to strategize your journey, things like that?

Yeah, one of the things I do, Dr. Torrey, is I, I look back at my massively transformative purpose. I look at my high, hard goals, my clear goals, and sometimes the things that I'm doing may take a longer period of time to really get done. So in order for me to really achieve them, even the clear goals, maybe it might take 7 months. To me, that's a long time, you know, to achieve them. Then I try to see what I can do to water that purpose. During those months. What can I do? You know, I might, I might do a series of Facebook Lives on my purpose, talking about it, talking to, uh, or I might do some vignettes and send them out to my mailing list. But it's all about me bringing that purpose back to the fore, back to the fore, and not just waiting for that big day when I explode out with it, but to use it. It's what I do, what I can with what I have right now while, while I follow my clear goals to success.

You know, and I'm not, I'm not at all surprised that that was your answer, right? That you, you tend and water that garden of purpose, because goals, effective goals, at least, are not set it and forget it, right? They take consistency. So I think it's an— and it sounds like that consistency is something that you plan for, you purposefully integrate into your day, into your calendar, so that you're touching these goals, you're thinking about these goals and your purpose on an incredibly regular basis.

Yes, to me, the teaching that I got in church, it all aligns with it. Um, what should I say? The scriptures align with it, because the teaching may have not quite aligned with what happened. But you know, like the scripture said, as a man thinketh, so is he. So what you think about is who you are, who you become, right? And it says that asking, it shall be given. Seeking, you should find, because everybody that asks receives. And it's the truth. When we make a decision that we want to have something, we must have something, we go for it and work hard toward it. We may not get exactly what we said we wanted. We're going to get something that's going to be valuable to us as a result of us taking that journey. So to me, this is all about really living out the truth of who we really are and who the scripture says we are. And I know everybody's not into scripture, so I don't always use the scripture, but I tell you one thing, I rely on them. So while other people trying to figure out what the truth is, I already got my truth. I know that if I'm thinking about the wrong things, I'm going to become that. I know that they say good communication— bad communication corrupts good manners. I know if I'm around people who have bad communication— that's why I wasn't repeating what David Foster Wallace said, "Alf and human beings." I'm going to say the word because bad communication corrupts good manners. I don't use profanity if I can help it. I definitely don't want to use that. Yeah, so it's just really a great opportunity to find systems that, that are aligned with who we are in order to help us to get next level in life. And that's what I see.

Well, as we, as we wrap things up here, so many great insights. Any, any asks or suggestions that you have for our FRC community before we go?

Oh, definitely. Where's Class 4?

I will, I will get right on that with, with Rianne. Well, I will, I will bring that to his attention that Dr. Pat needs another course to take with FRC. Fantastic.

I love it. I really love what's, what's being done here. It's really a, I mean, it's a brainchild because who could think of having this, this kind of course and then making it simple enough for everyday people to be able to grasp and practical enough to apply immediately. I mean, from, from the first module in Zero to Dangerous, I got so much help and support, and it brought me a long way in that first module. That's why I couldn't wait for the second, second, uh, session, the second course, and the third course. I'm like, I'm all over this because it's taking me on a journey that I want to go on, and I want to lead other people on that journey as well. So this is a powerful course, and I think anybody that's really thinking they want to achieve something great, you got to get a control. You got to get control of this, the flow. You got to get down to what the flow means, how to get into flow, how to control it, how to come down out of it. All those things are so powerful and important for anybody who plans to lead anybody anywhere.

Well, thank you so much for that testimonial. It's been an honor talking with you today and truly a joy to have you in this community. We definitely appreciate being able go on this journey with you, um, to help you, uh, pursue such an incredible, incredible purpose. And thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you, Dr. Torrey. Happy to be here.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team, and one of the biggest challenges of high performers is a lack of time or inefficient time management. Now, without leverage on your time, it doesn't matter the size of opportunities that come your way. It doesn't matter how excited you are about pursuing your goals. Time scarcity or poor time management blocks you from performing at your best. But here's the good news: you don't necessarily need more time. What matters is more flow. Research shows that a flow state makes you up to 500% more productive within the tiny bit of time that you have. Flow is the experience of being in the zone. It's a state of total immersion and focus where you feel limitless and you perform at the highest level. Flow Research Collective is founded by Pulitzer Nominee Steven Kotler, and we've trained thousands of high achievers to free up more time through flow. Here's the sad truth that we've seen: most skilled professionals find flow by accident. It's intermittent and inconsistent instead of inevitable. But what happens when you make flow a readily accessible and automatic part of your day, as natural to you as breathing, eating, or tying your shoes, for example? Well, for starters, time constraints start to matter a whole lot less. Now, multiplying your productivity by 5x sounds hyperbolic, so let's just back up a minute. Even if you only double what you can currently get done in a given day, wouldn't that be worth learning how to access flow reliably and consistently? This is exactly what we train together at the Flow Research Collective. Just go to getmoreflow.com. We'll train you in the same protocols we teach to Navy SEALs and to executives in the boardrooms of Google and Facebook. What you'll learn is backed by research out of Harvard, DARPA, Deloitte, and others. Tapping this high level of productivity through flow And freeing up your time exponentially is a measurable outcome you can expect. It's time to get your time back. Just go to getmoreflow.com right now.

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