BY: STEVEN KOTLER
4 THOUGHTS
1. Breathing to Boost Creativity: Quieting the Amygdala, Pessimism, and 80%
“Unfortunately, to keep us safe, the amygdala is strongly biased toward negative information. We're always hunting danger. In experiments run at the University of California, Berkeley, psychologists discovered that we take in as many as 9 bits of negative information for every positive bit that gets through.23 Nine-to-one are lousy odds under the best of conditions—and peak performance rarely takes place under the best of conditions.
Yet negative thinking leads to heightened stress. This crushes optimism and squelches creativity. When tuned toward the negative, we miss the novel.”
Nine-to-one. Those are our odds when it comes to noticing the negative versus positive, thanks to our amygdala. Fortunately, however, when we meditate or practice slow breathing (~4-6 breaths/minute), activity in our amygdala is reduced. (It’s hypothesized that this occurs through the “hyperpolarization” of neurons, which literally makes them harder to excite.)
This turns down negative thinking and turns up creativity. It’s not magic; it’s membrane potential : )
Perhaps this is why, after interviewing the most creative people on the planet, Tim Ferriss discovered that “More than 80% of the interviewees have some form of daily mindfulness or meditation practice.”
These practices naturally lead to cardiorespiratory coherence, which quiets the pessimistic amygdala, allowing us to see the novelty all around us.
So how about we slow down our breath, quiet our amygdala, and cultivate a little more creativity, today.
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Related Quote: “When Video Arts asked me if I’d like to talk about creativity I said ‘no problem!’ No problem! Because telling people how to be creative is easy, it’s only being it that’s difficult.” - John Cleese
2. Do This When Life Gets Complicated: Two Hours Instead of One
“The non-negotiable part is key. When life gets complicated, these four practices are typically what we remove from our schedule, but the research shows this is the last choice we should make. When life gets complicated, lean into these practices, as they’re how you get the creativity needed to untangle the complicated.”
Kotler is discussing four key practices for “sustained peak performance” (which he says are gratitude, mindfulness, exercise, and sleep).
But the idea applies to anything we do for better health (like breathing).
When life gets absurdly busy, lean into these practices. As Gandhi said, “I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.”
3. Personality Doesn’t Scale, but Breathing Does
“Personality doesn’t scale. Biology, on the other hand, scales. It is the very thing designed by evolution to work for everyone. And this tells us something important about decoding the impossible: if we can get below the level of personality, beneath the squishy and often subjective psychology of peak performance, and decode the foundational neurobiology, then we unearth mechanism. Basic biological mechanism. Shaped by evolution, present in most mammals and all humans.”
This is why breathing helps everyone. Breathing is biology. It’s “the very thing designed by evolution to work for everyone.”
Unfortunately, though, many people discover a technique that works for them and then push only that method, as if there’s a one-size-fits-all for breathing. But, as Kotler also reminds us, “What we mean is, in the field of peak performance, too often, someone figures out what works for them and then assumes it will work for others. It rarely does. More often, it backfires.”
So don’t let personality (individual methods) get in the way. Use principles, and do what breathing technique is suitable for you, where you are.
Remember: Personality doesn’t scale. Breathing does.
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P.S. How might you figure out which method is suitable for you? Well, let’s draw on another passage from Kotler: “The Montessori method emphasizes both intrinsic motivation and learning through doing. In fact, for this latter reason, it’s often called “embodied education.” Don’t just read about organic farming—go out and plant a garden.” We can apply this directly to our breathing. Read about the methods you’re interested in. Read about all the benefits of each technique. But then, most importantly, embody that education and learn through doing so you can find what’s right for you. As Confucius says, “What greater joy can there be than putting into practice what you have learned?”
4. How to Get Started with Breathwork
“But this doesn’t have to be all at once. Start by starting. Add in what you can right now, and as these practices begin to improve your performance, they’ll end up saving you time.”
Kotler is again discussing practices for peak performance, and again they apply perfectly to our breathing practices. Start by starting. One minute is always better than none-minutes.
So go easy and have fun with it : ) Your practice will grow naturally with time.
1 LIFE-CHANGING IDEA
“As far as I can tell, the only thing more difficult than the emotional toil of pursuing true excellence is the emotional toil of not pursuing true excellence.”
This sentence blew my mind. It’s scary pursuing excellence in our lives. What if we fail? What if we can’t live up to the highest version of ourselves? It’s easier to just not worry about it. But, as Kotler reminds us here, not pursuing true excellence is even harder.
It’s a lot like Abraham Maslow’s classic line, “What a man can be, he must be.” To live a life we’re happy with, we have to pursue the best version of ourselves.
And because breathing is literally the foundation of life, the biological process that “makes all things possible,” it’s the starting point for pursuing true excellence in all aspects of our lives.
All of this is to say that you should use this breathing stuff in whatever way is right for you to go out and chase your own unique definition of excellence. You don’t want to live with the emotional toil of not doing that.
1 STACK OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“This a book about what it takes to do the impossible. In a very real sense, it's a practical playbook for impractical people. It's designed specifically for those of us with completely irrational standards for our own performance and totally unreasonable expectations for our lives.”
“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.”
“Flow is to extreme innovation what oxygen is to breathing—simply the biology of how it gets done.”
“Peak performance works like compound interest. A little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, do this for weeks and months and years and the result won't just be a life that exceeds your expectations, it'll be one that exceeds your imagination.”
“Start with five minutes a day. Pick a time when you need to be calm. Before you start your day, before a big meeting, to mellow out before coming home to your kids. Long, slow breaths. The research shows that when our inhales and exhales are of equal length, we're balancing sympathetic responses (fight or flight) with parasympathetic responses (rest and relax).26 This calms us down quickly. And the calm helps us focus even harder.”
“One easy way to begin is to pause for a breath before you speak, act, or react, especially in situations of high emotion. In that pause, get clear on your motives. Ask yourself why you're about to do what you're about to do, then evaluate your response.”