Steven Kotler

. As is rising out of poverty; overcoming deep trauma; becoming a successful entrepreneur, CEO, artist, musician, comedian, or athlete, or generally world-class at what you do. What’s the common thread among these accomplishments? There is no clear path between points and, statistically, very poor odds of success.

Yet, there’s no secret secret. After decades spent researching this subject and training people to overcome those odds, I’ve repeatedly learned the same lesson: if you devote your life to accomplishing lowercase i impossibles, you can sometimes end up accomplishing a capital I impossible along the way.

More meaningful does not typically mean more pleasant.

I learned this the hard way.

And this leads us to the next question: What’s the biological formula for the impossible?

The answer is flow.

Flow is defined as “an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.”10 It is the state created by evolution to enable peak performance. This is why, in every domain, whenever the impossible becomes possible, flow always plays a starring role. The neurobiology of flow is the mechanism beneath the art of impossible.

Of course, describing flow as an “optimal state of consciousness” doesn’t get us very far. More specifically, the term refers to those moments of rapt attention and total absorption when you get so focused on the task at hand that everything else disappears. Action and awareness merge. Your sense of self vanishes. Time passes strangely. And performance—performance just soars.

Flow’s impact on both our physical and our mental abilities is considerable.11 On the physical side, strength, endurance, and muscle reaction times all significantly increase while our sense of pain, exertion, and exhaustion all significantly decrease.

Yet the bigger impacts are cognitive. Motivation and productivity, creativity and innovation, learning and memory, empathy and environmental
awareness, and cooperation and collaboration all skyrocket—in some studies as high as 500 percent above baseline.

Pulling off the impossible—or, for that matter, significantly leveling up your own game—absolutely requires flow, but it also requires training up many of the same skills that flow amplifies: motivation, learning, and creativity.

The philosopher James Carse uses the terms “finite games” and “infinite games” to describe the main ways we live and play here on Earth.12 A finite game is just that—finite. It has a finite number of options and players, clearly defined winners and losers, and an established set of rules. This is chess or checkers, for sure, but it’s also politics, sports, and war.

Infinite games are the opposite. They have no clear winners or losers, no established time frame for play, and no fixed rules. In infinite games, the field of play is mutable, the number of participants keeps changing, and the only goal is to keep on playing. Art, science, and love are infinite games.