Steven Kotler: Peak Performance and Getting Older (for humans and for dogs!)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I start most of my days by stepping in or
cleaning up dog, because that's what happens if you do
hospice care. Right. What I love about it, that is
the humility is it doesn't matter how big I get
in my head or my life. Like when your days
starts like stepping in and clearing up dogs, it brings
you back to the planet really fast, which I like
a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, New
York Times bestselling author Steven Cotler on peak performance even
when you live in an aging body, and even inside grief.
Interesting applications for the science of flow states, and more
coming up right after this first break. Before we get started,

(00:50):
one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional,
relational territory and our time here together, this show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work. Hi, friends, Okay, look,
this episode covers a lot of stuff, and it covers

(01:12):
it very fast. Stephn Cotler kind of does everything that
way in this rapid fire useful content mixed with some storytelling.
A little swearing and some tangents thrown in. It might
take a little adjusting, So I want to give you
a little structure to hang on to before we get rolling.
Stephen Coutler is a New York Times bestselling author known
widely for his work on peak performance and flow states.

(01:35):
Peak performance, at its simplest, is the performance of a
task at the optimum level of an individual's physical and
mental capabilities, or both together. Flow states are where you're
so immersed in what you're doing it feels effortless, like
your inner critic is not yapping at you, trying to
like throw things at you. There's a sense of timelessness

(01:56):
in what you're doing, being outside of time. You're just
completely immersed in what you're doing. Peak performance and flow
states could be these really nebulous, amorphous terms, but once
they've been broken down into repeatable, measurable parts, you can
actually apply this stuff to your life and to any
number of things that you care about. While Stephen focuses
a lot on what some people call like extreme sports,

(02:20):
extreme sports and in quotation marks here, especially in his
latest book, In Our Country, the principles of peak performance
don't just belong to superhero bodies and superhero minds. Aging
bodies maybe can't access flow states as rigorously or through
the same rigorous means as younger bodies. Injured and ill
bodies don't really quite match up to that extreme sport

(02:42):
example that is often connected to peak performance ideals. But
as you'll hear in this show, peak performance belongs to everybody.
So whether you're interested in exploring the limits of the
human body, or you're trying on a creative practice, or
you're curious about the places in your life where you
feel hell back internally or externally, this stuff is still

(03:04):
really helpful. The practice of peak performance is basically reaching
for that flow state, reaching for the place where things
feel like they have a lot more ease to them,
where you're not fighting so much against things like self
limiting beliefs or those sneaky little thought processes that keep
you from Okay, sorry to say this, those sneaky little

(03:26):
thought processes that keep you from living your best life.
I know, but it's kind of accurate though, right, Like,
we all have these internal narratives, sometimes conscious, sometimes not conscious,
that cut us off when we are reaching for the
things that we most want. Yeah, okay, now there is
something else in this episode that might surprise you. All

(03:47):
of this work on peak performance, those million best selling books,
all that stuff, Stephen applies all of that knowledge to
his work in dog rescue. His wife Joy run a
rescue organization focusing on dogs in need of hospice care.
So not only do we talk about flow states in

(04:08):
an aging body, we also get into grief, gratitude, resilience,
and the humbling nature of starting each day by picking
up mountains of dog poop. This episode is a fast
and furious ride through neurobiologies, sports bodies, wildfires, performance, negative mindsets,
and caring for the world you're in. It's a lot.

(04:32):
I'm curious to hear how the principles of peak performance
apply to your life. Once you've listened to this episode,
where do you feel that flow or if flow feels
like it's missing, where do you long for it? Leave
me a note on social or pop over to leave
a review of this particular episode and let me know

(04:53):
all right. On today's conversation with best selling author and
dog caregiver Stephen Kotler, Steven, I am so glad to
have you here with me today. We've already been like
chatting about cool stuff before we got rolling. But officially, Hi,
why I'm so glad you're here here absolutely Okay. There's

(05:15):
a lot of territory that I want to get into today,
but I want to start with just a couple of
foundational terms. I defined a whole bunch of stuff in
the introduction, But can you give me just the little
SoundBite mini definition on flow and flow states, because we're
going to talk about that a bunch perfect.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Place to start. Low has a scientific definition, not very useful,
but it has one which is where we're going to start,
which is an optmalistic consciousness, where we feel our best
and we perform our best. More specifically, it's any of
those moments of rapt attention and total absorption. We get
so focused on the task, hands so focus on what
you're doing that everything else just starts to melt away

(05:52):
and disappear. Action awareness are going to merge your sense
of self self consciousness, The voice in your head, the
inner critic gets really quiet, Time passes strangely, it slows down,
you get a freeze firm effectment and it's been in
a car crash. Much more frequently, we just get so
sucked into what we're doing that five hours go by
and what feels like five minutes, and throughout all aspects

(06:13):
of performance, both mental and physical, go through the roof.
So that is a rough definition of flow. To take
it one step further, when psychologists define flow, it's an
altered state of consciousness with six core phenomenal logical characteristics.
Phenomenal loogical is a big fancy word that says, this
is how the experience makes you feel. And I just

(06:34):
listed a bunch of them. So complete concentration on the
task of hand, the merger of action, awareness, the vanishing
to sell time, dilation, a sense of control which is
what performance feels like on the inside, and euphoria. So
when we measure flow, we measure I'll do those characteristics
show up how much how little kiss? Flow is a spectrum.
It's micro flow to macro flow. So when those six

(06:55):
show up in the dial that one or two you
go to work, you get sit down right and mail
of your boss and it's so sucked in that an
hour goes by and you've written an essay. That's microflow.
Macroflow is when all those show up and they're turned
up to eleven. Often feels like a mystical spiritual experience
when that happens.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I love that distinction because as you were talking about that,
I was like, how is flow different from like the
tunnel vision hyper focus of add which is like, I
just spent sixteen hours composing this email that no one
cares about. So I like that distinction or that maybe
that continuum.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, the other thing is flow is peak performance. It
tends to be useful. Right, you can get sucked in
tent hand, it's just as easily in a flow state
you can. And when I train writers, for example, out
to plot discipline is what we call it, it becomes
like have an outline, stick to your outline because, especially
if you're in flow, tangents are delicious. Details are delicious,

(07:55):
and you can you can break something as much as
you can. You can make it flows you're not called careful.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I like that. I like that idea of the structure
within which you can float around in your flow, that
tangents have a structured.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Limits are liberating, and it's especially true inside a flow.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
I love that limits are liberating. I love that you
said that because one of the things that I want
to talk with you about today, like your your new
book is about performance aging and all of these sort
of I know you don't mean it like this, but
like these glorious ideals of what's possible in the human
body and the human mind and apply these principles and
everything is going to be awesome. And that is a

(08:38):
lot of what you talk about on one hand, and
then when you sort of dig beneath the surface of
that and you look at also the other things that
you've done in your life, which we're definitely going to
get into. But like limitation is part of this, being
able to explore what's possible within limitation is sort of flow.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Is a hardware for people performance because we can all
get into flow. In fact, most mammals can get into flow.
So pea performance is a part of it. It's our birthright.
That said, at any moment of any day, we are
all facing limits and challenges and like it doesn't that
that stuff. They may change, some people may have it
worse today than others, but it's hard here. It's hard

(09:20):
for everyone, and there's always challenges and opportunities, right, and
flow can happen despite that, right, Like, that's the really
cool thing about flow is it shows up in everyone everywhere,
provided certain initial conditions are met and it doesn't change
over time. This is one of the things that we

(09:40):
know about flow. This is some of the last work
the godfather flow psychology is me how Chick sent me high.
He was a psychologist the University of Chicago for a
long time and then moved to H. Drucker in the
in Clermont and his last study but the best way
during COVID, his very last study was on flow promise
in the second half of our life? You want to
know do we crave flow up until the end? And

(10:04):
what he discovered is that we crave flow up until
our body is deteriorate to the point that we can't
access flow the way we want to. So a lot
of people performance agent work is one how do we
continue to access flow lad in life? And two how
do we protect against phys the physical decline? To protect
that as well?

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Is that the teacher that you said, you called him
up and he said, as you age, have as many
gateways into flow as possible.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, he was the last conversation I had with Mike.
You always asked me to call him Mike, and yeah,
I called him to ask him a question about the
role action sports had played in his life and his career,
because there's all this, a whole bunch of anecdotal data
that he was a much more serious. Everybody knows he
was a rock climber because he did work on rock climbing,
but there was a lot of anecdote the adda that

(10:50):
like he was a lot more serious about it than
he'd ever let on. And I'd called him to ask
him about it and the role flow played in his life,
and the role action sports played, and specifically climbing the mountaineering,
and he paused for a really long time. The two
minutes went by, and I was like, oh my god,
did I offend him? What did I do? And finally says, Stephen,

(11:11):
you got to be careful. And I had no idea.
What was tell you what? I thought he had lost
the plot. I was like, oh my god, it's like
write what's going on? And I said, what do you mean, Mike?
He said, well, you got to be careful. You do
something your entire life or flow and you get to
my age and forget about climbing rocks. Some days I
can't get out of bed. Have a backup plan. You

(11:32):
got to be careful. And I had been working in
and around peak performance aging on and for twenty years,
because there's like nine different things that fold into people
informt aging, and I've been working in all of those
fields for literally twenty years, but it didn't come together
into it like a once. Mike said that that was
sort of the quest that started in our country and

(11:53):
led to the quest that was that underled that book.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, there's something in there about how do you globalize
so much of the so much of sort of the
top level SoundBite work of both flow and peak performance
and all of these things. Like the poster child of
that is like all of these action sports and all
of this really physical stuff. And I love that in

(12:20):
our country. Obviously your vehicle is park skiing, which is
a very physical, physically demanding action sport. But the question
is how do I take stock of the reality of
what is. I don't have the body of a twenty
year old anymore. There are other things that draw me.
There are other things that pull me. Is what I've

(12:41):
believed in for so long? How does it apply to
who I am now and what I know about myself now.
It's like that looking for the third option between what
you call the basically like the mindset of like what
did you call it? The mindset of aging is the
slow long rock, the long slow rot, or the opposite

(13:03):
end of that or the you know, the flip side
of that is like Nanna na. The body is an illusion.
Aging is an illusion. Limits are an illusion, just like
believe in yourself and you can do it. Like That's
my problem very often with positive psychology is that it
bypasses the reality of limitation and gives people an unattainable ideal.
And what I like about, especially in our country and

(13:23):
some of the other things I've read of yours, is
there's a third option here where we can acknowledge limitation
in whatever form that takes and challenge ourselves to wonder
about what else is possible. And then in our country
you have like sort of operationalized how do how do

(13:44):
we wonder about what's possible and push ourselves.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Let's go back to so that you were talking about,
which is the long slow rot theory. This is the
traditional theory of aging, right, and it sort of gets
set up before it makes an off headed common in
nineteen ohse seventy puts it a common in psychologics is
in psychotherapy. His book psychotherapy, and that's sort of where
it really gets formalized. And by like nineteen ninety five,

(14:08):
all we've done is proof, right right, right, We've got
we've figured out that all of our mental skills decline
over time, all our physical skills decline over time, and
there's nothing we can do to the south the slide,
and this is the this is wad.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Of such a winker. Can we just pause and say
that Freud is such a jerk anyway?

Speaker 1 (14:22):
A lot right there? Also like he did. There's the
thing you have to appreciate about Freud and the thing
that nobody gives them credit for it. And you have
to understand that the unconscious wasn't a thing. We grew
up in a world knowing there was an unconscious, right,
Imagine having to discover the unconscious. Imagine having to in

(14:44):
like we're coming out of the Enlightenment. Rational materialism is
the pinnacle of thinking, and suddenly you're going to prove
and there's a there's a there's an amazing book called
The History of the Unconscious where it's literally a three
hundred year road to get to Freud. That's amazing. All right,
I'll be set this point. So the LONGSLW route theory
is the traditional idea of aging. Starting in ninety ninety

(15:06):
five ninety six, data starts showing up that says, hey,
wait a minute, this is wrong, really wrong. Where we
are today, thirty years after the data started showing up
is we now know that every single thing we used
to think declined over time. They're all used to lose
its skills. So if you never stop using these skills,
you can hang on to them and even advance them

(15:27):
far later in life than any thought possible. Now, you
made a statement like I'm not twenty years old anymore.
I'm sixty years old, and the twoth of the matter
is are fifty years old. That's not really true, Like
it's just it's like there are there are certain things
that have changed over time, for sure, But for most
of the skills that you were to proquire for most

(15:49):
anything you want to do, with the possible exception of
being like top one percent athletically in a handful of sports,
you can pretty much do it. So there is there's
there's no upper cap to that. But again your point
was also true. So this is in peak performances a
very well known, well established difference between affirmations and gratitude.

(16:12):
Gratitude works. Affirmations fail, and the question you have to
ask is why, And the reason is because we can
come with great both built in bullshit detectors and an affirmation.
If you sit there and stare in the mirror and go,
I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire. I'm a millionaire,
and your brain is looking back at you and going, dude,
you work at Walmart. What the fuck right? That's demotivating.

(16:34):
That's actually you're going in the other direction. Gratitude. I
am so happy and grateful. I'm healthy today, I'm so
happy and grateful. My legs, I'm so happy and grateful
it sunny outs. Those are all real things. And what
happens is your brain goes, oh, look, things are better
than I thought, and it has a real impact in
the brain. To actually put it specifically, we've all heard
about the negativity bias. What the negativity bias works out

(16:57):
to impracticality is we take in on average, nine negative
bits of information for every positive bit that comes through,
and conscious awareness mind you, is about one hundred and
sixty bits of information. So if the ratio is nine
to one, and we're only going to get about one
hundred and sixty bits that we can focus on at once.
That's a problem. And when you start doing gratitude and

(17:19):
your brain starts going, oh wow, there's good stuff in
my life. Maybe I don't have to be so panic.
The ratio shifts about five to one, six to one,
so it's better, right, That's what happens in the brain
during gratitude. So there's something to be said for You
can't pretend that the challenges aren't challenges, that they're not there, right,

(17:42):
You can't do that. That's going to work against you.
But nor can you use any of them. There's no
there are no excuses, parid, there's no viable excuses. You're
the only person standing in your way, and there are
very few dreams that you can't chase down.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
I love that you just made gratitude, dude, not the endpoint,
but a tool in my brain filter. Here is like
you just made gratitude a tool for curiosity. This is
like the way that I imagine andidepressant's work. It's like it
brings your brain to a point where you are able
to make decisions right. It doesn't make everything sunny. It

(18:21):
makes your brain come to a place where you have
more agency and you have more more choices. And that's
how I just charge you describe gratitude. Is it like
it's a way to sort of come back to negativity tool?
And yeah, it's a tool. Can.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
We do a lot of work with Glenn Fox as
a nuroscientists at USC invice. When I say we, I
mean the Flow Research Collective, right, there's about one hundred
people who I get to work with. I lead a
huge research team and one of the people we work
with is Glenn Fox, who's a nuroscientists at USC in
the world's leading expert on gratitude. We did a bunch
of work either we discovered that people who have regular
gratitude practices for reasons that have to do with how

(18:58):
anxiety blocks flow more flow prone. So if you want
more flow in your life, there's all full toolkit. One
of the tools you can reach for is gratitude. We're
actually doing a study. We're going to do it last
ski season and probably going to do it early next
ski snes and we're trying to figure out if you
can use gratitude as an active intervention in a crisis

(19:19):
situation as a way of calming down the nervous system
versus we know over time it works, but in acute
situations there are tools, there are other tools that work better.
We believe that we don't know, and nobody's done direct comparisons.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
We're trying to do, you know, if they're looking at
where the gratitude comes from, whether it is a person
in crisis choosing to put their mind there, or it's
an intervention from someone else.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
We're going to do it self directed. Thank you, We're
going to do self directed.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
I don't who, because like, gratitude is one of those
things that gets sort of weaponized to people like you
just have to be grateful, like stop doing this, like,
don't think like that, be grateful. So in my field, right,
I work in grief, and grief related to death was
where I started. And for a lot of people, like
their kid dies or their partner was killed in an accident,

(20:08):
and somebody's like, be grateful that you still have blah
blah blah. So this sort of external applied gratitude is
so not helpful. But I love I mean, I'm a
big fan of agency and sovereignty, right, so it's really
interesting to look at gratitude as a tool for when
your nervous system is starting to spin out from the

(20:29):
reality of the event, right, and what does that do
for you?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Pause? Psychology has a number of high performance basics. This
is not flow. This is what you have to do
to get the body ready to even produce flow. And
you've got to have a regular anti anxiety practice and
the three most effective ones are gratitude, mindfulness, and exercise
and mindfulness or stress reduction. Right, breathwork, it's eleven minutes.

(20:54):
You need eleven minutes of focus meditation of breath work
or do a loven kindness script or take your pick,
but it's not very long. Graduate practice takes about five
minutes right down through things are grateful for it turn
one into a paragraph, blah blah. You really just want
to feel the gratitude of your system. That's what you're
going for. Or eleven minutes or twenty to forty minutes
worth of exercise. And what we tell people is under

(21:14):
normal circumstances, if you're having an you know, if you're
just just a normal day, do one every day at
a tune your nervous system because anxiety will block flow.
But if you're stressed, do two. And if you're super stressed.
Do three and you know when I'm grieving, and we
run a dog sanctuary and I do hospice care, and

(21:35):
we love all the dogs in our care greatly. But
the downside of doing lostice care is they die. That's
the job, and so there's a lot of grief. And
I have come to believe that extreme grief is a
three day cycle, at least in me, that like the madness,
the like I can't be trusted to make good decisions
portion of it. Most there are occasions where it lasts

(21:58):
a lot longer most of the time. And you should
know that when I say we do hospice care and
special needs care, my wife and I do this. We've
had over seven hundred dogs have passed through our facility.
You know. One of the things about death and grief,
and people ask me about this. This was also the
pe performance work, right. We just came out of hospice
care especial needs anti aging medicine, so this is where
some of that started. But when you've experienced that much

(22:22):
death and death of people who you truly love, I
know terrible things about death and grief, things that know
human beings should know because you don't. Nobody goes through
grieving seven hundred times if they're living a normal life.
That's not like a exactly same thing to do. So
you learn really wild ass things about grief, at least
I have. And for me, one of the things I've

(22:42):
learned is a three day cycle of madness. And during
those three days, I end up doing a lot of
I'll do a lot of meditation, and I'll usually go
for a lot of walks. I'll sometimes I'll force myself
to go to the gym, but like, weeping at the
gym is never a great look. It tends to freak
people out, so sometimes all avoid that. But like after
those three days are up, where I sort of give

(23:04):
myself a pass on whatever every day, then it's gratitude.
Like every day I'll make sure I hit all three
of those like during that recovery period, just to keep
my nervous system in check.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's interesting, like I can hear in my head people
listening and saying, like three days, what I hear you
saying is you have become so accustomed to having your
heart broken, You have become so accustomed to goodbyes that
you know what you go through and familiarity gives you

(23:37):
a chance to apply skills, apply tools, to take care
of yourself, to know yourself in the ways that you
understand yourself. It's not I got three days and then
I nothing bugs me anymore.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, no, no, no, I mean no, no, I just mean
when I say three days, what I mean is I
should not have havy machinery. I should not sign legal documents.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Like impact zone.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
I should be really careful because I'm not. Like grief,
as you know, was treat was considered a mental illness
into the twentieth century, right, so like there's a reason
it still is. Yeah, I mean, and I think it'd
probably still right, So there's a reason. So when I say,
I mean no, the griefing process lasts as as long
as it lasts. And I mean like there are certain

(24:19):
certain dogs, like certain friends of mine who pass where
I mean, I can still like if I think I
see that, I can like burst of tears at any moment, right,
Like some of this stuff never goes away, and you
know that. But I'm literally like three days is my
rule of like when I can't be trusted decision making wise, right,
I've also seen literally like early on in this work.

(24:41):
I write about this in Small Furry the first time
we had a string of dogs that I was like
aid in a row. I literally lost my mind. I
mean like not figurrely lost my mind. I was hit
crazy doing nonsense of like grief can really drive you
over the edge. It's scary because you years olf doing
stuff and you're like, I know this is not sane,

(25:03):
and I'm doing it. Anyways.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
In Small Furry Prayers, you you talk about sort of
an ex multiple crises overlapping, right, like an existential crisis,
a financial crisis. You had lime at the time right
now recovering, had lupus, recovering from lime, so like all
of these things dissolving.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
So I've always said this, and I say this is
my in West of Jesus. I am a person who
will follow an idea right off the edge of the world.
I absolutely will. I get obsessed, I stay obsessed will.
And my wife and I from the moment we met,
would have this argument. Now she was a writer and
she did dog rescue work, and we would argue about

(25:43):
art versus altruism, which is in the book which is
in Small for her right, And it was literally like
we're trying to figure out what is the best way
to live in the world, What is the best way
to do The most good in the world is art.
So many people believe in art, so many people believe
in altruism and enjoy. My wife thought art was bullshit,
totabull shit. She she didn't like inspire people to change. Well,

(26:04):
it's crap. The only thing that matters is frontline altruism.
Has on altruism, and I had had the art experience,
but I had not. I had done some frontline altruism work,
and I had run a different nonprofit. It wasn't like
I was new to this stuff, but not on the
day to day grind that is dog hospice work. So
I like, I said yes to settle an argument, to

(26:26):
win a bet. I thought I was right, and I
couldn't prove it. I couldn't prove it wrong until I
had had done both her satisfaction and then my opinion counted.
So like, let's not kid ourselves. I got in for
a lot of reasons, but I really wanted to win
an argument.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Wait, so who won?

Speaker 1 (26:44):
So it's interesting because my books have had a pretty
big impact, like in terms of art, you know what
I mean? Like in terms of its ability to impact
change from the world. So I do believe that you
can really make a difference with art because I've seen it.
But I also get Joy's point because has on altruism

(27:06):
is a very difficult, trying strenuous, you know, it's hard,
and art is also hard and very and can be
extremely painful. So I don't know if one, but I
get Joy's point that there's something to be said for
frontline altruism and if you haven't done it, you know
what I mean. Like, I go into rooms with people

(27:28):
millennials who love to talk about their purpose. Him my
name Sandra, and my purpose is blah blah blah, and
I want to punch Sondra in the face. And the
reason I do is because it's like, I know, you're not, like,
spend twenty years on the front lines of something and
then come to activing and talking about your purpose, right,
and then I'm going to have that discussion with you.
But until that point, you're just an airhead. As far

(27:49):
as I'm concerned that.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
There hasn't been enough time to live in the reality
of the reality of the front line.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
I don't like virtue signaling, like at all even though
the dog work I don't talk about it a whole lot.
It's just what we do, right, I talk about all
the other stuff. One of the things I love about
the dog work, though, is because I start most of
my days by stepping in or cleaning up dog shit,
because that's what happens if you do hospice care. Right.
What I love about it, that is the humility is

(28:18):
it doesn't matter how big I get in my head
or my life, Like, when your days starts like stepping
it and clearing up dog shit, it brings you back
to the planet really fast, which I like a lot.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, And it would be so easy in a way too,
with all of the peak performance stuff in flow and
all of this really exciting stuff about mindset jails and
how we get out of mindset, like all of this
really cool stuff, it would be easy to sort of
float off into the ethers and not be grounded in
the visceral embodied world. And literally, as you said, stepping

(28:51):
in dog shit like it would have to keep you
in some ways rooted in the visceral world, which to
me makes all of the science beautiful and useful, right,
because if it's not rooted in the visceral shit of
the world. Then it's just a cerebral exercise.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
There is a lot of super cerebral exercises that I
think are really worth a dam Like they really are.
They're very, very useful. But ultimately, and I don't know
if this is everybody, but ultimately I'm wired sort of
like it sounds like you, I want things practical and useful. Yes,
So at the Flow Research Collective, what I've spent my

(29:33):
life studying in the neurobiology peak performance. And the reason
I like neurobiology so much is if you want to
make stuff reliable and repeatable and work for everyone, neurobiology
is your friend. Personality. Psychology is squishy, it's subjective, it's
different in everyone, and you can't you can't coach for it.
You can't train from it or teach from it because

(29:54):
it doesn't work. It's ineffective. But when you get to
the level of neurobiology, it shared, It shaped evolutions the
same in all humans. So I like that because neurobiology
turns out to be a much more practical interface. In fact,
if you go back to the nineties, so miactually sent
me high we've mentioned before, teamed up with a brilliant

(30:16):
Australian sports psychologist Susan Jackson, and they wrote a book
together called Flow in Sports where they tried to use
what we knew about flow psychologically to train it. And
you can read the book. They're lousy at it. The
success rate is mediocre at best, maybe sometimes never on Thursdays,
occasionally on Tuesdays Wednesdays are out like it's just it's absurd.

(30:39):
And yet so with the collective we use the flow
short scale, which is literally the same measurement tool that
Susan Jackson and might develop for this book. So we
use her same measurement tool and we train. We measure
pope pre and post in our trainings and on average
we see a seventy to eighty percent boost in flow.
Our confu is good. We know we're doing or good

(31:00):
at it. But that's really about the biology. That's everybody's
wired for this, and if you can get your biology
working for you rather than against you, this is what's possible.
But you want to come in neurobiologically. You don't want
to come in psychologically because it's not practical.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
I like that you said called it squishy, right, Like
it's just it's just it's not practical. It's not practical,
and it's like it's there's so much room for interpretation
and misapplication and all of those things, and I cannot
stand it.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Coaches bug the shit out of me sometimes for this
because they figure they're usually people who figured out what
worked for them, and then they're trying to teach to
other people and it's disaster just as right, And it's
I mean, and this is basically I mean. This is
like literally things like where are you the introversion to
extroversion scale? What are your risk tolerances? Those are individually different,

(31:52):
and how you answer those questions changes everything about how
I would train you in peak performance. Right.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Absolutely, It's one of my favorite things about the way
that you frame the work is it is a container
for individuality and curiosity. Right, it's not drink this thing,
do these supple Like, it's not that it's not prescriptive.
It is a framework that encourages you to be curious

(32:19):
about who you are and how you work and what
is possible for me. Like I love that we.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Could literally spend the rest of our time together drilling
down and what these two are really mean. But let's
not do that. Perhaps But let me just give you
peak performance aging in a sentence, and I want to
point out a couple things about the sentence after it.
So you want to rock to you drop, You want
to regularly engage in challenging, creative and social activities that
demand dynamic, deliberate play. And dynamic literally means requiring strength, stamina, agility, flexibility,

(32:51):
and balance. When you put them all five together, that's
dynamic dynamic deliver play in novel outdoor environments. That's peak
performance aging in a single sentence. And that's sixty years
of research, hundreds if not thousands of studies, scientists global,

(33:12):
very well established. Now, what was not on that list?
When I talked to most people at anti aging, what
the first thing they start talking about is supplements, pharmaceuticals, ice, bass,
et cetera, biohacking. And one usually when pharmaceuticals are involved,
somebody's making a buck, so it's hard to get unbiased anything.

(33:35):
The thing I want to point to you out out
about that sentence is none of those terms, those are
not substances. That's not biohacking there, it's all psychological tools
that have neurobiological impact. And there's sixty years of data
on this. I always tell people of you talk to
them about like the stuff going on in the biohacking community,
and you know this supplement and that's I'm like, guys

(33:57):
that you're at the cutting edge of peak performance aging.
And historically in regenitor medicine, what we've learned from and
this is another field I've worked in and around for
thirty years, ten percent of regender medicine tends to hold
out and be true over time, and the other ninety
percent gets thrown out. So, like all the cutting edge
stuff that people are doing, historically, what we know is

(34:17):
ten percent of it's real and ninety percent of it's fake.
Everything I just listed, there's sixty years of data saying
this is really, really real and some of it like,
let me give you a simple example, a positive mindset
towards agent. I am excited about the second half of
my life that I think is filled with interesting possibilities.

(34:37):
We have sixty years of data showing that a positive
mind towards agent will add eight years healthy years to
your life. If you have a negative mindset towards agent
or inverted, are exposed to negative stereotypes around aging. The
most common stereotype in the world. This is Becca Leavey's
work at Yale. She found that by the time you're sixty,

(34:57):
if you're exposed to negative stereotypes around age young, or
have a shitty mindset towards aging in your thirties, forties,
and fifties, by the time you're sixty years old, you
exhibit thirty percent greater memory decline than people without that mindset.
So the benefit is eight extra years. The detriment is
a thirty percent greater memory decline. This is what's this

(35:18):
is where, this is what's possible. This is what we
know is possible versus you know, roll the dice on
a bunch of other stuff. And I'm not saying I
run all the experiments with all the other stuff I do,
but it's experimental and I'm just checking it out and
I'm learning and I'm not expecting anything because I know
I'm playing on the cutting edge and I'm just data

(35:40):
gathering and in twenty years maybe i'll have I'll know
something real, right, But like the stuff like I do
this for people performance aging, those are different things.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Before we get back to my conversation with Steve, I
want to talk with you about peak performance in working
with grieving people. I mean peak performance here might be
a stretch, but look, working with grief is hard, and
the ways we've been trained to do it usually make
things worse. If you are a therapist or a nurse
or an educator, or you work in end of life issues,

(36:19):
looking at you, funeral directors and hospice folks. When you
work with humans, grief is always in the room, whether
it is outwardly spoken of or not. If you want
to know how to be truly helpful to people grieving
any kind of loss, let me help you. Spots are
still available in my six month grief Care Intensive training.

(36:39):
It's designed for people in the healing professions, but you
don't have to be a therapist to join. This session
begins on September fourth, twenty twenty three. All of the
information is that the registration link in the show notes
to this episode, and you can also find it in
my Instagram bio at Refuge in Grief. All right, let's
get back to my conversation with Stephen Cutler. There's so

(37:02):
much that I want to get into, and we don't
have time for all of the things, so I'm like
actively trying to sort through my brain of preferred topics
to find which one, and I think I want to
go with. You know, I was listening to you on
some other podcasts and one of the things that I
like put in bold in my notes was, you know,
all of this stuff about strength and stamina and agility
and balance and flexibility, dynamic movement, all of this stuff,

(37:26):
like before we even get there. Your two foundations were
social connection and deliberate play, which I feel like if
there's a sub thread through a lot of the conversations
that I've had over the last couple of months, and
we've talked to Chase Jarvis and we've talked to Chip Conley,
you know, a couple of people talking about aging and

(37:50):
for a long time. Right, But there's there is this
social connection and deliberate play. You would never think that
play is like something that is scientifically valid and necessary
for our survival.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
I was talking to Martunde Thurston earlier this season and
we were talking about how difficult it is to feel
safe enough to play with other adults. So there's just
all of this really interesting stuff about social connections, social bonds,
the willingness to take risks and to be playful together
and that that really are those are the preconditions to

(38:29):
flow and performance aging. Am I on there?

Speaker 1 (38:34):
You are? So PEA performance flow is foundation with PEA
performance aging. Let's do this first and then I'll type
play yeah, yeah, because it will be easier. Okay. So
when we say flow is fundamental performance aging, what are
we talking about? This A couple of things. One, there
are nine known causes of aging. Biologically, they all have

(38:54):
one thing in common, which is stress and information. So
anything that fights stress and information is an anti aging tool.
When we drop into flow, stresshorns are flushed out of
our system and replaced by positive, feel good neuro chemistry.
So anti aging for starters. Two, flow underpins while being
life satisfaction, mastery, purpose, all these things that really impact

(39:18):
the quality of our later years. Three, Flow produces a
sense of mastery because we're always pushing on our skills
and learning and flow and control. That's one of the
core characteristics of the flow state. With the phenomenal flow
is the sense of control. Its peak performance on the inside,
and when we experience those feelings, it boosts the production

(39:39):
of T cells, which fight diseases and mental killer cells
would target tumors and cancer. And other six cells. So
flow has huge anti aging benefits all tied up in there.
So getting into flow really matters over time. Play is
fantastic because there's a lot of built in flow triggers,
as a lot of stuff that will block flow that

(40:02):
isn't present in play. One of the biggest things about
play that's so important from a people from its aging
standpoint is so if you want to lifelong learning matters
because if you want to prevent cognito decline Alzheimer's dementia,
the two things that matter most are mastery and wisdom.

(40:24):
Both mastering wisdom when we learn new skills. Think of
wisdom as emotional intelligence written large, and mastery is like
skills writ large. Right, the bolth of them produce very
diverse networks across the prefernal cortex that are impervious to
cogno decline, So this is like backup for the brain,
and float has to be a signal of mastery. That's
one of the things the state kind of signifieses, oh,

(40:46):
I've learned all these skills and now they're coming together
in this new way. So there's an argument from an
evolutionary perspective that that's where flow came from. One of
the reasons is because we needed a signal for mastery.
All this is sort of besides the point, but learning
in play, first of all, it's so much easier to learn.
But second of all, when we learn normally, you get
a little bit of dopamine and that's about it. When

(41:08):
we play, you get a little bit of dopamine and
you get endorphins, so an totally additional feel good neurochemical.
The more neual chemicals that show up during experience, the
better chance to move from short term holding into long
term storage. So you get this huge neurochemical dump when
we play, and we tend to augment and massively improve learning.

(41:30):
There's also about eleven different kind of nervous system benefits
to play and psychological but we could go on and
on and on and on and on. The most important
thing about play, and this is the coolest thing, is
one of the reasons that they don't believe older adults
can onboard difficult skills like parskiing, right, is because we've
got a quote unquote a motor learning window. We heard

(41:50):
about that slam shot at the end of childhood or
young adulthood. We've all heard this don't become a ballerina.
If you haven't learned by the time you're eighteen, don't
become a gymnast, haven't learned by the time mean twenty
two whatever. But parkskier don't become a parkski if you
haven't learned by the eight thirty. It's all because this
motor learning window. And it turns out, like a lot
of things in people, performance aging, sort of true, sort

(42:14):
of true, there's a motor learning window. There's certain things
that do shut down. But as a general what changes
is not the motor learning window. It's how we learn.
Kids learned by playing. When you play, there's no self consciousness,
there's no wrong, there's no shame, there's no blah blah
blah blah blah, and so a lot of stuff about

(42:34):
that blocks flow can't show up when you're playing. So
play tends to produce a lot of flow for all
those reasons. It tends to amplify learning. And if we
actually go back to a deliberate play approach to learning,
we sort of reopen not one hundred percent, but we
can wedge it open pretty far. Same motor learning window,

(42:54):
and we get these endorphins to go along with our
don't mean good chance. The things that happen in play
work I don't remember for later.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
I love a good scientific explanation of the benefits of play,
because play is just I think we also get into
that binary of like the world is too serious to
be playful, or like the world is frivolous. I don't
need to care about anything. I'm just going to go play,
like all these binary, crappy things, right, And so much
of what you talk about and how you talk about
it is like there is a vast middle ground here

(43:23):
that has so much opportunity and so much joy and
so much goodness. And it's that orientation of play and
curiosity and finding those places where we get to mess
around with life and see what's possible, backed up by science.
So I want to add just one more circle into

(43:44):
our overlapping ven diagram.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Here.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
We've been talking a lot about peak performance and flow
and performance aging and all of these things. We talked
a little bit about end of life care and hospice
and dog rescue, one of the favorite things in our
country for me because of who I am. So towards
the end of the book book, you write about watching
the wildfire reach your ski resort in Tahoe, and you
wrote all of the peak performance training in the world

(44:06):
couldn't stop me from sobbing like a baby.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
And I'm just reading that and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Okay, we always know that I'm going to cry at
some point during an episode, but there was so much
in that for me. A lot of your work sort
of off off of the books and off of the stage,
is in dog Hoss Best, but it's also in facing
the environmental crisis, and I wonder we've brought in three

(44:31):
big things that for a lot of people like that
would be the entire focus of one episode. Is like
just this piece or just this piece, or just this piece.
You're clearly a person who synthesizes a lot of complexity
all of the time at rapid speed. But is there
a through line for you just in those three things.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, So let me just answer this question very simply.
I always tell this to people, so people think of
look at my flow work, and they get I get
all these crazy comments like, oh my god, you're doing
such good in the world, and you know, blah blah blah,
thank you that all that stuff and whatever on it.
Because I started the flow work it has nothing to

(45:13):
do with anybody else. It's completely selfish. I want it
more flow for myself, for my friends, and I like
the puzzle, like the intellectual puzzle of the neural biology
of decoding this hard thing. Flow is my altruism is
about making the world a better place for animals. So
if you want to through line in my life, I
want to make the world better place for animals is

(45:35):
the central through line. I train people and flow. People
want peak performance. They condu because they want to be
more productive at work. Fine, I'll take the trade because
on the other side of flow, empathy increases, ecological awareness increases,
and cross species altruism increase, and wisdom increase. So you're

(45:55):
going to have all the peak performance in the world. Right,
you want to be more productive at work? Most people
like to God like they want to take my stuff
and use it to like make better widgets or more
widgets in the world. And honestly, like I could give
a fuck, right, Like, if that's what you want to do,
this okay, cool, I'm not going to stop you, but
I'm not interested in your widget making ways, that's not

(46:15):
really my thing. What I want is you're going to
be more empathetic and altruistic and care more about plants
and animals and ecosystems on the other side of a
flow state, and that's what I care about. It's totally like,
I'm in it for the animals and I'm willing to
train you and flow because i think it's going to
make the world a better place for animals. And right
or wrong, that's sort of how I approach it. And

(46:37):
it's sneaky, but like I've tried to go at environmental
stuff head on for thirty years, I've all you do
is get your ass handed to you, to you. I mean,
even the dog work. People are like, oh my god,
you've helped seven hundred dogs. That's so amazing. No, it's not.
We killed twenty million dogs a year in America. That's
what we euthanize ten to During COVID it was twenty
million a year. You know. Good years is down to

(46:59):
eight million. Me and my wife have given up our lives.
I literally can count on both hands the times I've
been out to dinner since I've been married in eighteen
years because of the dog work. Right, there's enormous about
the sacrifice, and we haven't done it. We haven't made
a dent. We didn't even dent October, right, if it's
twenty million dogs a year and we saved seven hundred,

(47:21):
Like with twenty years of work, we didn't even we
didn't even make a dent in a month. So I
don't know, But you push the rock up hill because
that's what you do, right, And I've always said this
like this, this is from last ten of Cyruss where
I wrote the line, But it's really important to me,
which is all you can do is your inch, like
and that's all it's going to be in the end.

(47:42):
Like even if you think back, think about people who
you know, you and I grew up Mahatma, Gandhi, Martin
Luther King, like right, like these were huge legendary people
who had changed the world in ways, And go ask
fifty percent of gen Z who Gandhi was, and they
don't know. They don't know Martin Luther King maybe maybe.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Maybe they might know the names, they don't know the reality,
but they.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Don't know who any of these people are. And my
point is, like even fifty years later after Gandhi, this
guy that like literally was worshiped globally and most people
don't even remember, like all we get is our inch.
All you can do is your inch. It doesn't like
maybe maybe there are a handful of people in history
who did more more than an inch, but like they
didn't know it ahead of time, and so like I
tend to be very humble about it, but like, I

(48:31):
think you got to sort of do the work. So
I don't know. The animals tend to be at the
center of most things that I do.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
I love that we not only brought the then diagram together,
but that the center of that is care for other beings, right,
empathy and relatedness and respect and stop being assholes. Right.
Like I feel like that if you had to look
for the through line of my life, it would be
like everything I do is to make people stop being

(48:58):
jerks and making things worse and just be awesome. I
think that's all of it.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Now.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I end every conversation asking about hope. So I'm going
to ask you the same question, although I think that
we just covered it and what you just said, but
I'll ask you anyway, knowing what you know and living
what you live, what does hope look like for you
at this time?

Speaker 1 (49:21):
So this is a whole other kettle of fish because
a lot of my work has been on technology and
the ability to use technology solve global grand challenges, which
I written six books about. And I stand by what
Peter Dmanus and myself said in Abundance, which is because
of exponentially accelerating technology, for the first time in history,

(49:44):
we as human beings have the power to solve all
our grand challenges. There's nothing we're up at, poverty, energy scarcity,
water shortages. We can solve these problems we have. We
actually have the technology at this point. There's a willpower issue.
But when it comes to like can we actually solve

(50:06):
the problems that are that are in front of us? Yeah,
actually we we can. So I'm incredibly hopeful as far
as like is it within our ability? But I've said
forever this is also the work on flow that like,
if we're going to meet these grand challenges, it's going
to require the largest cooperative effort in history, and that's

(50:28):
it's all of us working together at our best. So
in Flow, like never before, we have the tools, but
like hope is, hope is about the collaborative effort. So
there's a lot I mean, we know about flow technology
at this point, like we peak performance at a level
that's never been available before, and we have the most
potent technology in the history of the world at our fingertips.

(50:51):
So these are these are this is amazing, This is astounding.
There's a ton of reason for hope. But you know,
as as you pointed out, we've got to get out
of our own way.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
I love that the answer for hope here is like
collaborative effort using the tools and technology that are available
to us, and that peak performance and flow are in
the service of a collaborative effort towards goodness.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
So I spent my career right all of it like
if there's a central through line, it's tracking down those
moments of time and the impossible become possible. Right. That
really was the center of the work I did, including
a small farry prayer, because like people work on the
front lines of animal altruism. It's one of the most
impossible jobs in the history of the world. Right. The

(51:40):
most impressive people to me are people like Patricia Wright
is a good friend of mine. Patricia Wright built a
Ramanafona National Park in Madagascar, right, And I love pat
but pat literally like has been like trying to keep
lemurs alive almost single handedly, you know what I mean?
In madicaa gard, which is not a particularly same place

(52:03):
governed by the rule of law or anything else like like,
and I look at that stuff and I'm like, oh
my god, you want to talk about an impossible challenge.
I would go nuts in a month, and she's done
it for fifty years. So but all of it is
about like these impossible challenges. And always you always see
the same thing. It's always people harnessing accelerating technology and

(52:24):
people extending even capability. When everything impossible comes possible, it's
those two things coming together always. So you tend to
see people in flow, but you always tend to there's
some kind of technological thing underneath there. When you put
those things together, you tend to see the impossible come possible.
So they seem very very far apart, but they come
together in a really cool, hopeful place.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
All Right. I want to be mindful of our time here,
so I'm going to put so many things in the
show notes, and hopefully people will go and find you
and find more. I'm going to put some of your
environment stuff in the show notes so people can look there.
But is there somewhere that you want people to go
looking for you or anything else you want people to

(53:08):
know before we close up.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Well, I'm an introvert, so please don't come looking for me.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Please don't.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
But if you want to find me, outline at Stephen
Cootler is me on social Stephencoller dot com is my website.
The Flow Research Collective dot com is the Flow Research Collective.
So if you're interested in flow anything performance, that's where
to go. You're interested me Stephencoller dot com. I want
to learn more about our Country, There's a website for
the book No Our Country dot com.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Forest and Fire Initiative.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
The Forest and Fire Initiative is parked sideways because there
were five things that we wanted to do. Two totally
fell apart and three got a call like that somebody
else built the fund while I was trying to start
at somebody else me do it. We wanted to get
the Xprize, the Wildfireexprize funded. It got funded, so like

(53:58):
a bunch of that stuff got done on and moved
elsewhere and some bit on it. We don't know how.
I still don't know how to solve it. By the way,
wildfire is the single most heartbreaking thing I've I thought
I knew for heartbreaking. No, getting into wildfire was truly
the one of us start breaking things. Ever, I like

(54:19):
you and if I were banging your head against a wall.
So yeah, we we parked the forest Fire Collective on
the sideline because of the five there was it was
a five wrong platform. Actually three of the things got done.
One of them got turned upside down in such a
significant way that we still haven't been able to come
back from it. It's a Nevada it was a Nevada

(54:42):
environmental problem. That like, it's a mess. Stay two for
that one. That one's parked by the sideline for I'm
licking my wounds and I'll be back in a year
and there's something new on that one.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
We will keep watching for the intersection of peak performance
and environmental work, and I'm sure or it will happen soon. Okay,
thank you so much for being here. Everybody, stay tuned
for your questions to carry with you.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
We will be right back.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Each week. I leave you with some questions to carry
with you until we meet again. We covered a lot today.
We jumped from the internal to the external. We went
from the global view, then back to the intimate view,
So there is a lot here. This conversation left me
with some questions about what my own flow states are
and how in touch with them or out of touch

(55:38):
with them I am. It also made me wonder what
peak performance within limits might look like for me at
this point in my life. I also really like the
ways to even operationalized his grief. Like he's so familiar
with the devastation that each new death brings. It's become predictable.

(55:59):
Not easy, that's not what we were talking about, right,
but like predictable, and in being predictable, he knows what
he needs and the people around him know it too.
These practices of peak performance might seem irrelevant to things
like grief and loss, but here they are right in
the mess with everything else. Just because we can't fix

(56:22):
grief itself doesn't mean there aren't measurable, tangible, effective ways
to live inside it. I think that's really cool. All right,
how about you? What stuck with you in this conversation.
Everybody's going to take something different from the show, But
I do hope you found something to hold on to.
If you want to tell me how today's show felt
for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered

(56:44):
let me know. Tag at Refuge and Grief on all
the social platforms so I can hear how this conversation
affected you. You can also leave a review of this
show or this episode so I know what you're thinking.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
I love reviews.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Follow the show at It's okaypot on, TikTok and Refuge
and Grief every everywhere else. To see video clips from
the show, use the hashtag It's okay pod on all
the platforms, so not only I can find you, but
others can too. None of us are entirely okay, and
it's time we start talking about that together. Yeah, it's

(57:16):
okay that you're not okay. You're in good company. That
is it for this week. Remember to subscribe to the show.
Leave a review for the show. Not only do I
love them, but it makes it easier for other people
to find right, Like if they hear, hey, this is awesome,
then they're more likely to listen. And the whole point

(57:37):
here is that we want more people having interesting conversations
about difficult things together. All right? Coming up next week
author ten bay Lock on Love, Loss, food, and Hollywood.
Follow the show on your favorite platforms so you don't
miss an episode want more on these topics. Look, grief

(57:58):
is everywhere. As my dad says, daily life is full
of everyday grief that we don't call grief. Learning how
to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or
simplistic dismissive statements is an important skill for everyone. Get
help to have those conversations with trainings, professional resources, and
my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay,

(58:20):
plus the guided journal for Grief at Megandivine dot Co.
It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The podcast is written
and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown,
co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support
from Micah, Post production and editing by Houston Tilley. Our

(58:40):
intern this season is Hannah Goldman. Music provided by Wavecrush
and background noise provided by me Vigeting in a slightly
squeaky chair because I have had too much coffee. I
will say that very often when I meet somebody with
a similarly fast brain and multiple different threads that all

(59:04):
need to overlap, it comes out as disorganized chaos. And
I don't find that with you. There's a lot in
there and a lot to track, but sometimes it's just like, wo, I.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Tend to tie things together if I can, because I can't.
I've seen that if you don't, it looks like narcissism
on parade.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Yes, exactly, that's.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
What it looks like. If you don't tie it together,
you're like, well, the host had fun and the other
guy had fun, but we it wasn't useful at all.
It wasn't practical, and it's.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Just ego on display. So I do try to tie
it and tie it up a little bit. It's also
all the same thing for me. It's all of a thing, right,
I mean, I don't separate out the parts, and I'm like,
I'm sure you don't separate out the you know what
I mean, the parts of your life.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
It's at all. It ultimately all blowns together and the
advantage one of the great things about getting older is formal,
compartmentalized stuff hands to you bleed together. Right, there's those
walls that you tend to come together, and I like that.
It's one of the one things about getting older. You

(01:00:12):
get to be more complete or whole or whatever whatever
that is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Yeah, the solution of boundaries in a good way

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Megan Devine

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