117. Dr. Chris Bertram: How Flow States Enhance Performance & Ignites Creativity

We talk about golfers getting into the zone , snowboarders reaching their maximum potential and how you can to . My guest today is dr Chris Bertram . Chris , it's such a pleasure to sit down with you . I've been looking forward to this for so long . Would you mind introducing yourself for people who might not be acquainted with you ?

I'm in the School of Kinesiology , I'm an associate professor there and teach and , you know , involved in research projects all around the idea of Learning how we , how what is learning look like on the inside , how can we optimize the conditions for learning and do it in such a way that , when pressure shows up , that the skills that we've worked so hard to learn

Are free to be expressed in the moment . So that's kind of what my real area of academic interest is .

And and then I , you know , somewhere along the way , started stepping outside of the University Teaching setting and research setting and outside of the laboratory and trying to take some of these concepts and apply them to people in some really high consequence environments athletes , executives , other folks who are , you know , putting themselves out there and testing their

skills under really extreme conditions of pressure and Started working with a lot of athletes , sort of on a one-on-one basis , and Trying to help them get better , get better , faster , and do so in such a way that when you know the big moment shows up , the big game shows up , that you know they're able to perform at their best , at least increase the probability

that that might happen . And then , yeah , a few other interesting twists and turns along the way started working at a company called exos , and Exos has a big presence in the athlete world as well , which is fun and interesting .

But they also we also are pretty heavily involved in corporate wellness and corporate fitness and you know there's a big , there's a big need these days , as you're probably well aware , in terms of , you know , epidemic levels of burnout and people really struggling at work with mental health and just work life balance and that sort of a thing .

So in that realm it's taking some of the lessons of high performance sport and Trying to apply that in a corporate setting . What are the lessons we know , what are the things that we know work in high performance sport ?

And then you contrast that with what you see happening in Corporate America , corporate Canada and and you see that there's a very large disconnect there . So we're trying to help them connect some of those dots too . So it's a bunch . It's a bunch of things .

And then I've got a you know Sort of a private coaching practice to where I work with one-on-one clients and a few athletes here and there and , you know , do some fun things , just kind of a one-on-one to you're a very busy person , a multi talented individual .

I mean , I think , for a long time , even in my world , it was a term that I I didn't really get too close to , because , you know , I've been around athletes for a real long time and you hear them talk about , you know , being in the zone and I know that that's real , I've been in it myself and I've seen it on display many , many times .

But the problem was , for a long time they're just weren't any words even to describe it . So you know , aaron , if you've ever had an experience where you felt like you were in the zone or in flow , and then I asked you afterwards , like what was the secret today ? Like why did it all go so well ? The answer that you invariably would get is I Don't know .

It just felt easy today and there's not really much as an academic , as a researcher , that you can do with that . Some Experience that we're having that is ineffable .

There are no words to describe it , and there certainly wasn't any real neuroscience that was Going inside , looking inside the brains and bodies of people when these experiences show up , and so all of that started to change . And it changed first coming out of the psychology world and A person by the name of me , hi .

Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihaiyi was the one who actually coined the term . So flow is a Scientific term for these other words we hear are these expressions like being in the zone or runners high or that sort of a thing . So flow , as chick sent me hi .

And now the scientific field of flow defines it , is sort of this higher Possibility space of human performance and the human experience . So it's where we both Tend to perform at our very best , but it's also where we tend to feel our very best . So the lived experience of being in flow is very much associated with happiness .

Csikszentmihaiyi wasn't actually really interested in at first at least interested in athletes or creatives or , you know , artists . He was interested in just everyday people and what are the things that underpin happiness . And what he found along the way was flow . Because when he would ask people when you're at your very best , what's that like ?

And people would say things like well , when I'm speaking , it seems like one idea just flows into the next . Or if it's a movement context , like an athlete or a dancer , it's like one action just seamlessly flows into the next and that word kept showing up and that's sort of the origins of the term flow .

And so he characterized all of these things that happen to us , and it's the same , no matter if you're an athlete or if you're an artist or if you're an assembly line worker . When people feel that feeling show up , the same kinds of experiences happen . Things like time passes very , very strangely .

Sometimes , you know , an hour goes by , feels like five minutes , right . Sometimes the opposite of that happens and time really opens up and expands . So there's this weird perception of time that happens in flow . There's a sort of a Dropping of our sense of self or our ego . We feel connection with people or with an instrument .

Right , there's like not self and other , but there's this , you know , feeling of connection that emerges there and there's sort of like this , you know , feeling of control that we have . So it's not easy and it's it can be high risk and high stress , but all through that there's a sense that we have the skill to manage the challenge that is in front of us .

And so through all of those things , he defined what the characteristics were of flow .

And then the really cool stuff , to me at least , started happening maybe 15 , 20 years ago when Neuro imaging technology started showing up and being used outside of more traditional medical context and you put freestyle rappers into fMRI and watch what happens when they start freestyle as opposed when they recite memorized lyrics and Very different things start happening in

the brain . And so then it was . Now we can look inside the human being , inside the mind and body of people when they're in flow , and you start to see the same kinds of things show up .

So it's part lived experience , but in sort of underneath that lived experience are all these interesting Neuro biological phenomena that are at work that are giving rise to these Interesting perceptions that we're having if I'm not mistaken , often you put in a lot of work prior .

There's , there's effort that goes in before it and , as a fan of UFC fighters , our understanding is that they work incredibly hard and then they want to get into the state where they're just an active Participant in a process , where they're not forcing anything , they're just they're feeling themselves in that moment .

But there's time that goes into it before , and so it seems like that's a necessary element . Am I mistaken ?

I mean , I think in order for people at that level so you have see fighters or professional athletes of any kind yeah , in order to show up on fight day or game day and to be able to Express all of the skills that you've worked so hard on in the gym or wherever you train , it does Necessarily require that we put in that work right .

There is training , there is practice right .

You have to grind to get your skills to a place where you want them to be and and then you hope at least this is traditionally the way it was that when the moment arrives that you're able to Find some element of flow and things start to connect but I would say prior to maybe five or ten years ago , that was kind of still seen as a mystical type of

experience right where sometimes it happens and all the stars align and you know , the Fairy dust gets sprinkled on you and flow arrives and everything feels great and you do your best . But Understanding that there are these internal mechanisms .

Now that we understand that there are these internal mechanisms that are happening inside the brain , in the body , when people get into flow , the game , now they're really fun stuff and sports science to me , and just in human biology to me now , is understanding that there are ways you can Trigger these mechanisms with intention so that you can increase the probability

. That's something like flow might show up more predictably flow on demand instead of flow by accident .

triggers Things that you can do in the environment are things that you can do to sort of change your own internal environment , that can help set the preconditions for flow , and you can do that in advance

. So , for example , a lot of what I talk about with athletes is about you know , how are you warming up before you go out to perform ?

Because everybody in sport knows the concept of getting warmed up , but that term has always been kind of exclusively about getting your body warm , you know , making sure that your muscles are warmed up and that you're , you know , loose and agile and activated .

But the idea that we can actually warm up our mind for doing big , scary , dangerous , hard things is new and I think it's a really exciting place and that goes well beyond the world of athletics . Right , if you're a business person and you're walking into a big meeting and you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed out . What can you do there ?

How do you prepare yourself for those big moments ? How do you prepare yourself for a podcast ?

There are things that we know work in this domain , and so to me , I think we're certainly a lot further along the way of sort of helping to build up , but we're not at a level , certainly , where you could say that this is 100% likely going to drop you into flow .

But what I see it as is increasing the probability , by doing these things before or during events , that you can do to help increase the probability that it might show up . I think we're getting pretty good at that .

I don't know if you watch Harry Potter , but I think of that golden snitch and you don't always get it , and there's almost a beauty to the fact that it's something you reach for but you can't always guarantee and hit a button , because if it were , then you wouldn't have the experience or the recognition of the value of the experience that you get when you're

able to go like I got it this time . It's almost like a gift .

So I attach an electrode onto the front of your head and then when we go through some strategies and what happens is when the person shifts their brainwave patterns and there's a very stereotypical brainwave pattern we know that shows up when people get into flow you can do that on purpose and as people start to get better at it , what happens is it sends a

little signal through an app and then all of a sudden , this little helicopter drone starts to fly and they're legitimately flying what looks sort of like a snitch in midair and it gives them immediate feedback that they actually have this ability to shift their state of mind in real time and then they can control it , which is really cool and powerful for people .

But the other part about it is the part about the chase part that you're talking about . That's a strategy that we know doesn't really work . There's this really interesting thing that happens , I think , where you almost have to not care . There's a surrender element to this , where you have to do the work and you have to sort of prepare yourself for it .

But in the moment you kind of have to drop back and let go of the ego side and I'm going to get that thing . That's when it tends to show up more frequently . So I have this great t-shirt that kind of describes this .

I could have worn it today , but it's got discipline in one circle and surrender in the other circle and in the crossover of that Venn diagram is flow , right , yeah .

I just watched a UFC fighter say I just didn't have it today . Yeah , the consequences are you lose half your purse , you've moved down in the rankings , your likelihood of ever getting a UFC championship again goes down . All this adversity arises . The second you lose and to just not show up on a day Is that hard to watch ?

People go through and know that they're capable , the potential's there , but they didn't get to display it .

Those are the things that I think we can make real progress on , and we can make real progress on is helping , because it sounds to me what happened in that particular situation was something between the ears , from the neck up the difference between wins and losses in the UFC , the difference between gold medals and silver medals .

At that level , what you're talking about is the mental game For the most part . There's exceptions to that , but for the most part at that level , at the elite level , winning and losing boils down to who can manage the pressure the best , and that , generally speaking , is a process that's going on between your ears .

By the way , I've talked to golfers and they have caddies that walk around with them and they confer and make decisions together .

If , let's say , the golfers getting close to the lead , or maybe they're in the lead and there's a couple of holes left to play and the pressure now is starting to ratchet up , one of the things that happens when we're under pressure is that we get a lot of adrenaline released into our systems . Adrenaline does a couple of things that are really interesting .

Number one is it really heightens focus of the mind . It can get us very locked into what's happening in the here and now . It's important , but it also drives a lot of energy into the body .

It shunts blood away from your stomach , where it might have been digesting food , and now all of a sudden it's out in your musculature and you've got all this energy pumping through your veins the thing that happens to people when they get under pressure . In those case of golf is if they have an eight iron that might normally go 160 yards , say .

Now they're pumped full of adrenaline and that club will go 190 yards and all of a sudden they've missed their target by 30 yards .

This happens and so a lot of times what caddies will do is secretly tell the player the wrong yardage so that they will try to factor in what adrenaline might do to the result of the shot , unbeknownst to the person who's actually hitting the shot . I think that's not a great strategy .

To me , the better strategy is to start to understand what pressure does , start to build up some awareness of what adrenaline feels like when it shows up in big , heavy doses , understand what it's doing to you , notice what it's doing to your mind and to your body , and then try to use tools to push back a little bit on that signal or use it .

So it's a long-winded answer to your question . Pressure is one of certainly the preconditions , I think , for high performance , but it can go too far . There is this kind of like Goldilocks effect there , where you definitely want to have some and the more you can manage , I think , the better .

But if it tips too far into like hyper focus or focusing on the wrong things and that energy in the body starts to turn into jitters or to feeling like the butterflies now turn into nausea . Like that happens too . Adrenaline has an effect on the digestive system . That's when it's gone too far . It's no longer making diamonds .

Do you think the experiences are different or are they similar ?

What he was able to describe is that , no matter what you're doing , if you're an athlete , if you're an artist , if you're an everyday person , just getting up and going to work when you feel you're best and when you feel that come around , the same eight or nine characteristics tend to show up .

But the other really cool thing that Chik-Sent-Me-Hi figured out is that flow is not just one thing . So , yes , when we hear about flow , we tend to think about gold medals , we tend to think about innovative breakthroughs and cool artistic expression come to life and all of that . That's true .

Flow at the decibel level turned all the way to 10 , but flow can exist in more subtle forms . The term for this is micro flow experiences , where you might feel some of the characteristics show up , but in a more subtle way .

So you know like we're having a really good discussion here and you know , I look at the clock on the wall and I see a half an hour has already gone by . This is a version of a flow experience . If you get in a car and you drive for two hours and it's like , well , where did that time go ? It's a version of it .

People play video games and lose five , six hours . It's a version of flow , but it's at some level on this spectrum . And the really interesting thing there is that I think people undervalue those micro flow experiences because it doesn't feel as sort of earth shattering as the big peak moments of life which are like the peak flow experiences .

There's so much that can be gained from these micro flow type experiences and those are the ones that are around us all of the time . And I'll tell you , this was actually my introduction .

I said , you know , for a lot of years I kind of resisted the idea of you know flow from a scientific perspective until I actually read a paper once where it was a learning study and the title had something to do with flow intervention and escalated rates of learning and what they did was they had this flow intervention in one of the groups in the study and

the other control group had nothing , and then they both were challenged with a learning task and it turns out the group that had the flow intervention learned the task either twice as fast and up to five times as fast as the control group did , and literally when I read that study I thought that's probably not real , because this is the world I live in .

This is the kind of research I do , and when you get tiny little learning effects because of some thing you did or some coaching thing you did , you celebrate it if it's statistically significant . But I can tell you it's never double and it's certainly never five times the rate that the control group is learning at .

And so I dug into it a little bit and it turns out all this intervention was was using a bit of technology that quiets down a part of the brain called the frontal lobes , the front here , where it handles all the executive functioning . It's our sort of conscious thinking brain .

When you quiet that down , that's where this effect showed up , and I've had this done to me . I've used this technology and you don't even notice anything different in your kind of lived experience . It's so subtle that you don't even notice the difference . And yet look at these learning effects that are going on .

That , to me , is very , very powerful and says that there is much that we can gain from flow experiences , even when they're at these subtle , even sometimes subconscious , levels .

One of those mechanisms I talked about earlier that we know shows up when flow comes around is this quieting of the prefrontal cortex , and there's the name for it , if you want to know . It's called transient hypofrontality . It just means temporarily , the frontal lobes of your brain are selectively deactivating .

So this part of our brain that we walk around with and we use all the time that we think is so important and it is in many cases but it was evolved in many ways for survival .

Human beings have very highly evolved frontal lobes , right , they're bigger than most animals , and part of it is that we can look at a situation and remember from the past whether that was a good thing for us or not . A good thing for us , right ? That's a very useful survival skill .

Or we can project into the future , like if you look outside and you see that the leaves on the trees are starting to change color , you know that maybe fall's coming and that maybe we should put away some food because we know from past experience that the weather is going to change . That's a very human thing .

Right Now , that's your frontal lobes doing what they were designed to do survival .

That is not what you need in high performance , because as soon as you're thinking about the past , and maybe what's gone wrong in the past , or whether you're thinking about the outcome of what you're trying to achieve in this moment , whenever we start doing this time travel , we are losing the present moment and we are back in time or we are thinking ahead .

If you think about performance anxiety , what is it ? You think about anxiety generally . What is it ? It's either pulling the past into the present or projecting into the future what might or might not happen .

The thing that happens to us when we get into flow is this actual mechanism that allows us to time travel goes quiet and we just lose the basic capacity to time travel . So what are you left with ? Right here , right now , and in the present is where all the magic happens , right . So that's , I guess , a level of the surrendering that goes on .

It's just letting go of your attachment to the things that have happened before and the things that have happened and might happen in the future .

serenity where you're at peace with the past and present and the future and you're just a willing participant . How do you feel ? Do you feel maybe sorrow for individuals who don't know what this is like and who are constantly worried about the past and worried about the future and don't get this moment ?

As someone who is an expert in it , I'm just curious just to what you think .

Yeah , I do . But the optimistic side of me knows that there are skills , there are tools you can use and there are skills you can practice that can help you to get better at this , and I kind of see that as my quest right now is to help people understand that you're not powerless over your state of mind or your state of body in a moment .

There are things that you can do to change that and , yes , there are things .

There are things you can do through talk therapy that can work , but there are all these other interesting mind body tools that you can use that can , in an instant , change your state of mind and put it into a place that's more advantageous for whatever it is you're trying to do , whether that be get yourself worked up and into a place of high performance , or

maybe that's to calm yourself down after a bout of work or a long day or a stressful moment when you're trying to get to sleep at night . How do you calm the nervous system down there there are strategies and tools that we know work . This is based in really good evidence .

Now I know that every once in a while I start to talk , it starts to sound like am I just talking about new age , like kind of woo ideas . No , I'm not . I'm an academic first and foremost . I don't ever talk to people about things that haven't sort of passed through that filter of evidence first .

So I'm really optimistic that there are things that people can do . And one of the first things I would say and I think we kind of lose this capacity , I think , as we get older too . You know , kids are running around , playing and basically in some version of flow . All the time they're frontal lobes that we're talking about .

They're not even fully connected yet . They don't get fully connected until you're about 25 . So you're kind of in this hypo frontal state most of the time , but then it locks in at about 25 . And then that process needs to become a bit more effortful and intentional .

But I think if you can connect to things that you know give you pleasure and that's different for everybody .

If you can just carve out a bit of time for those things that give you that sense of timelessness and selflessness and control , and do that with intention and build that into your life where you can , you're going to feel better every day , and then you can start to craft a life around that and , look , we can all have the jobs that give us these high flow

experiences . I'm not , you know , so ignorant to say that . I know that there aren't people who do jobs that they don't love , but they have the rest of their time right , and there's even things you can do at work to make that time go . Once you start to work on these skills , you can change even your experience with your job , even if you don't love it .

So yeah , it does . I think there is so much room for optimism here . I think we're at a new frontier in how we think about mental performance , and I don't just say that in the athlete context . I think of that in terms of every human being alive .

And that's really what this 21st century , the internet gives you access to is different voices and different ideas that encourage you to kind of access your full potential , even if it's on the side , even if it's a side has or side passion . Do you have any concerns about it becoming a job ?

So , for like many artists I think of , they worry about it becoming the work and then them losing that passion . A lot of rappers I listen to they go . I started this just for a love of the game , a love of the music .

Now it's my job , now it's my business to talk about my feelings and shortcomings and it loses a little bit of the gusto but , like high performance athletes , are still able to find that flow despite it . Do you think making it a job ? Is it all a danger ?

But I understand the world of motivation out of theoretical level and it basically it boils down to this and this is going to be oversimplified , so if you're a motivational expert out there , forgive me , but basically there's a couple of ways and things that can motivate us .

Either there are things that are really intrinsic to us , the things that we that connect us to our core values or passions . Right Is are we doing it just because we love it ? There's a word for that in the flow world is called auto tellic . It means that we want to be in flow just because it feels so damn good to be there .

It's not because it's going to give us rewards or fame or any of the other extrinsic motivators . Right , we do it because it's connecting to something that feels great within us or aligns with our values .

And I think once you get to a certain point , it is very , it's tempting and it's a bit slippery to say , oh , there's a big financial upside to this or I'm getting recognized for that thing , and maybe I need to do it because somebody else wants me to do it , because maybe that's gonna help their financial upside .

All of those things are the trappings of success and , yes , they can pull you away from those intrinsic drivers doing it for the love of it or because it makes you feel great or connected to your passion .

So I think it's worth doing an exercise every once in a while where you do a bit of a motivational exploration and psychologists do this work and they try to connect you to your why . I mean , I hear that a lot . Why are you doing this at its core ? What is the thing that you're doing this for ?

And if you can remind yourself of that every once in a while , I think it can help give you sort of a more sustainable fuel source . I just watched with my kids for the second time the last dance . Michael Jordan right . He was a master at finding external extrinsic motivators .

That person , that person , the illness that I had I'm gonna overcome this thing , this force that's affecting me , right , and he did that to great success . I don't think all people can do that . It's a very hot burning motivator , but it tends to burn out fairly quickly and then you have to find something else to replace it .

I think a more durable fuel source that you can use over the long haul is connecting it to something inside of you that's really powerful and meaningful , like a passion , or like your values , or like something that just feels great , like

flow .

And I'm just curious , when you look out into the world of mental performance , who are some of the people you admire ?

Right , and Jocko's kind of the same approach . Right , just be disciplined , just get yourself into that place , make a decision in advance that this is what you're going to do and then stop questioning . From that point on , that's cool and that's really it's amazing that a human being can actually walk .

That walk and those two people do that , by the way , like David Goggins is not a joke , that's what he actually does , and but I also think that that's not everybody right .

And so , when it comes to you know , how do you find the strength to you know , get yourself out of bed and to do something positive for yourself , and how do you then learn to shut that off at the end of the day , I think having the right mindset is really important , and when I think of mindset , I'm thinking very specifically about that word through the

lens of Carol Dweck and the growth mindset idea . Right , that's , you see obstacles as opportunities and you see failures as opportunities to learn . Right , that's a mindset and that really is a necessary component . It's a really helpful component to it , but I don't think for everybody it's everything .

So , yes , try , when you're going to go out and do something really hard or challenging , to have the mindset that , no matter what happens , you're going to learn .

Okay , that's good , right , but beyond that , when you start to bump into your own inner , resistance or fear starts to show up right , depending on what it is you're doing or you know , anxiety starts to show up . What can you do in those moments to overcome it ?

And sometimes , reminding yourself to be growth mindset oriented is good , but to me , mental performance should be about more than using this side of your brain to talk down that side of your brain . Right , trying to use one thought to you know , take the power away from another thought doesn't always work .

In my experience , it is one tool , but to me , that's where things like how we breathe , how you're using your eyes in a given moment , all of these things that you can do in real time to shift your state of mind and body that don't require you having to have this inner wrestling match inside your own head . The more tools you can get , the better .

So when the moment shows up and you try one , it doesn't work . What else have you got ? So this is about building a quiver of mental performance skills that you can drop on , hopefully whenever the you know the moment arises .

And so there are all sorts of breath work strategies out there these days . There's things like four , seven , eight breathing and box breathing and Wim Hof breathing and all these other techniques . Right , they all have a place , but they're all based on this .

You know , sort of one simple concept that if I inhale for a longer period of time , my heart rate is going to go up over a longer period of time . So if I'm feeling tired and I wanna activate and become more alert , I can accentuate the inhale portion of my breath .

It stimulates this part of your nervous system called your sympathetic nervous system , which is sort of your fight and flight response , right . So every time you inhale you get a little bit of activation there . Now , every time you exhale , you activate what's called your parasympathetic nervous system and everything starts to come down .

So you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed in a moment . A breathing strategy of like quick inhale Really long exhale is going to push back on that stress response , and it happens . So what does that do ?

It changes your state of mind because adrenaline and the stress response have an effect up here in your head , but it also has an impact on what's happening in your body , like this idea of mind and body connection .

Again , it almost sounds a bit new agey , I think , to some people , but there is just no doubting anymore with what we know about neuroscience that there is a two-way , bi-directional communication between mind and body . So what you think can affect what your body is doing . There are many really interesting studies about this .

Think that a milkshake is full of a lot of calories versus one that has very few calories , and your internal response with your insulin response , will change just based on what you think about . What is in that ? Your physiology changes because of your thought patterns , and the opposite is true .

How you breathe , using your body , can change your mind in an instant too , and those are just two examples of it .

But yes , in a nutshell , in moments where you want to be in a different headspace , maybe you're too amped up and you need to dial it back , or maybe you're feeling under-amped and you just feel like you want to get up for something important or you want to get up for that run , you can breathe your way into that .

At least you can set the stage for it by changing your basic breathing pattern . So it's not just the old advice of take a deep breath , but there are some very conscious breathing patterns you can use to change the state of your mind and the state of your body immediately , every time .

You started skeptical on this idea of flow , and the research moved your position and , in a time where the idea of science gets challenged and that there is one scientific understanding , the idea that it's a journey is what I've always loved about it and that you face information that you may disagree with .

You dig deeper and then you go okay , you know what the information's coming through . I'm just curious as to what your perspective is on this idea of science and being able to learn and taking information . Some data is not good , some data is good . You gather it together and you get a deeper understanding , and you sometimes move your position Sure .

And the scientific training really is about becoming skeptical , right , it's about training skepticism and always trying to ask , like , the question is what experiment can I do that will disprove my hypothesis ? That's your starting point in science . You have an idea , you think , well , this would be a really good idea .

The first thing you do is what experiment could I do to disprove my hypothesis ? That's the scientific . And then you you're rigorous about the methodology underneath it . And then you try to look at your data in an impartial way and try to see what story is in there .

And so the whole process of science , the whole scientific method , is about this overcoming skepticism and doing everything you can to prove yourself wrong first . So if you get to a point where it's like I couldn't figure out a way to disprove this , I guess there must be something to it , right ?

And then , as you do that repeatedly and you do that and other people start to replicate what you've done and the same results show up . Then you can start to say with a bit of confidence that this is something . There is a there there right Doesn't mean that there won't be a study that maybe challenges it . You have to take that on board too .

But I think the issue that we see so often these days is you've got a mountain of evidence over here and then you've got the challenging counterargument over here and maybe there's one or two of those and somehow we equate those right , Because they get amplified through social media or somebody on some podcast shines a light on this thing right .

The thing that we have to be mindful of and I think this is incumbent upon us as scientists is to communicate and translate this evidence better for the general population , because there is a fundamental difference between 20 years and 20,000 studies and one random study or five random studies .

You have to weigh the balance of evidence , and science means never having to say you're certain . By the way , that's one of my stats prof at UBC had that shirt and I love that , but I think it also can take people into this world of well , just , there's no truth anymore .

Like I've heard it said , we live now in a post-truth world , and that drives me insane . I think what we need to do is just learn that the process of science is built on skepticism and we're not saying facts or proof hardly ever , Unless you're talking about mathematical proofs . What you're talking about is the balance of evidence .

Those are the things that we need to guide our decisions , and we have to be willing to stand up and to put in the proper place what one or two things that are contrary to the bulk of evidence might say .

It doesn't sound accurate and I'm gonna go investigate and I'm gonna go try and understand . I'm gonna ask the question and then the evidence is gonna present itself and I'm not going to look with what reaffirms what I already thought .

I'm going to be open-minded and read and look at the methodology , which is why I think that's one of the most crucial things good universities educate people on is the methodology . That's the meat of the paper , that's . It's not the introduction , it's not all the things they accomplished , it's how did you conduct this study ? Is it accurate ? Is it reliable ?

Did you do it in an unbiased way ? And that's where , like , the truth starts to come out .

Everybody knew Nick was going on to some big NCAA program and of course he did .

He went to the University of Washington and had great success there and we kept in touch over the years and when he turned pro he had some early struggles trying to make his way onto the PGA tour and it was a bit of a longer road than I think a lot of people saw for him and we would chat here and there and we just kind of built up a bit of a

friendship

over the years . And then over time that started to formalize into more of a professional relationship where I was trying to take a lot of the things that we've talked about here today . How do you really sharpen these skills of mental performance and do it in such a way that shows up when big pressure moments arrive ?

And so somewhere along the way , especially in the last year , we've really gotten serious about a program we set aside and we set some goals for one year . We did this back in the fall , in October , to get him ready for this upcoming year , the year that we're now in , and he was really open to the idea and he really bought into it .

And so a lot of these skills that we talk about , like building up better self-awareness , understanding what is happening in your mind and body from moment to moment . If it's not where you want it to be , how do you shift it ?

Those are the skills that we work on , and it goes a lot deeper than that , obviously , but those are the basic skills , so that we're trying to make it so that when moments show up like what happened to him at the Canadian Open , in a playoff , with a 72 foot six inch putt to win a tournament that would be the biggest moment of his life and have now

become an iconic moment in Canadian sport history that you might be able to deliver . Look , I am not going to sit here and say that anything that I said had anything to do with that putt going in . That was Nick doing what he does , and even at that there was an element of chance to a 72 foot putt .

But it's about preparing yourself and doing the work as much as you can in controlling what you can control , including your own mind and body right in that moment , so that the probability of that putt goes from one in a million to , I don't know , maybe one in 10,000 .

And you know , every once in a while that one shows up and so , yeah , that was pretty cool .

So these are the craziest of the crazy snowboarders who throw themselves off 75 foot jumps and it's super dangerous and super risky and really scary .

So the similarities are especially in the case of Big Air , where you're standing at the top of a 200 meter in run , looking down the barrel at this 70 or 80 foot gap , jump at the bottom and you're trying to tell yourself in that moment are you going to throw four spins and three flips or are you going to try five this time for the first time ever ,

knowing that if you don't make it there's a really good chance . You're putting life and limb on the line . That's literally the place that we're at now in competitive Big Air snowboard and getting yourself ready and I mean mind and body ready for those moments of extreme stress . There's a lot of crossover .

A professional golfer isn't going to die if they miss that putt , but in those moments it feels like something like that to them .

So the similarity is just about learning to become more aware of what your inner state is and then shifting it into a place that either is more conducive to high performance , maybe flow , and then , when it's all said and done , being able to shut it all down and recover and put the energy back into the system .

Those are the things that are the same , so those are the tend to be the areas that I enjoy working with the most . I've worked with a lot of team sports and I love working with teams , and team dynamics are really interesting to me , but I think I'm most passionate about working with individuals who are out there alone .

Even if you have a team around you , ultimately you're the one who's got to take the club back or run the race or drop into that jump . It's you and it's a lonely place at times , and I'm really drawn to that . What is that ? You versus you battle , looking like where it's just you .

Right , you don't have a team behind you to get the rebound or to pass the ball or to make a save . It's all on you . So I find that arena of human performance really , really interesting . Of course , snowboard has its differences , though . Right , you drop in , you get gravity going for you . It's more conducive to flow .

It's a very flowy environment , but I do think there's some interesting crossover , too .

It's no , oh , we all kind of tried our best and we didn't have the best , and that gets it's clear cut and it's more .

The amount of information and data that they have and the strategies that they have , both physical skill training and mental performance . It's just it's really cool to see the approach that is unfolding down there under his direction .

It's kind of trickling its way through the entire sport , but he's really driving that and I know that he's a big believer in the mental aspect of it and making sure that you show up and you don't just not have your best on a given day to do whatever you can and turn all those knobs that you can turn before you step in .

And you know the bell rings Moving in a different direction .

She doesn't have the same logical reasoning that I might have , and that's certainly my area of preference . I like to think about things logically and reason things out but it increased her ability to be emotionally understanding and nurturing and supportive .

You've actually done a lot of research on this and I'm just curious as to what your research brought about in terms of FASD .

disability , you've got alcohol causes brain damage full stop . It's a teratogen and it's known to cause certain types of brain defects and that turns into certain behavioral manifestations of the things that you talked about .

And people that live their lives on that spectrum have incredible challenges trying to navigate the kids , for example , in school as they become youths . You see incarcerations going up and there's a disproportionate number of people that are in prison who have some diagnosis along that FASD spectrum , and the whole system seems very much geared against them .

A lot of the skills that they are not strong in are the things that our schools , for example , put a lot of priority on , and so our program was about trying to find what are those hidden strengths , because everybody has things that they're good at . So , for example , it is the most simple one .

I can think of Most of the kids that we had in our program , along with their diagnosis of FASD , also had ADHD diagnoses

. They go together and there's probably a lot of crossover in the neurobiology there . So they're hyperactive and they have difficulty paying attention . But you look at what happens to those kids when you put a ball in their hand or you put them in front of a video game and all of a sudden there's no problems with attention .

They'll throw that ball off the wall eight million times in a row . They will sit down and get really engaged in video games and have no problem going four or five hours .

Not that that's the best thing , necessarily , but it speaks to there is a hidden strength there and attention if it's geared towards something that they are already inclined to enjoy or to find some flow in , maybe right .

So we were really interested in doing a strengths analysis and then trying to figure out how you could build programming around that and help them develop parts of their brain , sort of indirectly , by targeting things that they love doing or that they're really good at and that reinforces that they have capabilities , instead of always saying do more of these math

problems or go do some of this quiet reading right , the way that we structure school . So we were building this strength-based program and we saw some great results from that . So a lot of that stuff .

My colleague at the University , allison Prichardor , she's sort of taken up the mantle on that work and is continuing it to this day and it's really , really interesting and , I think , really important .

I think the last time I checked , the rates of the diagnosis of people on that FASD spectrum continue to go up , and so the need for better ideas to help people learn to use the skills that they're already good at and to help them understand that they have capabilities and abilities as opposed to just disabilities .

Right , I think there's so much room there to explore and I'm glad to see that that work is continuing .

She's very considerate and thoughtful and that's , to me , her superpower and it's unique . And you can look at the challenges , but to look at it from both perspectives yes , maybe you have a deficit in that , but certainly other people with no disabilities have their deficits . Where are your strengths ?

And to admire people for what they're good at is what we do all the time . We don't look at snowboarders and go well , why aren't you a basketball player ? We admire them for what their skill is and we're able to set aside all the things that they might not be good at and recognize them for their abilities . The other one is Parkinson's disease .

Can you talk about your research ?

So basic understanding of how the brain controls the body and the two branches of that that really got me interested were what happens when we are really really good at controlling our bodies like that's the case of expertise and athletes and talented musicians and artists really good at moving our bodies in certain ways right .

And then I was also really interested in what's the other end of that spectrum where all of a sudden in the brain , because of the depletion of dopamine neurons , all of a sudden we lose the ability to control our bodies and we end up with this neuro degenerative disorder that is called Parkinson's disease .

And so to me there was this really interesting look at the bookends of the possibility of human performance what happens when everything goes right and everything is all firing on all cylinders , versus what happens inside of us when we lose the ability to control our bodies because of really a single neurotransmitter deficiency in the brain . That's fascinating to me .

I learned as much about human potential by studying what happens when things go wrong as I have when things go right . The classes that I teach at the university still cover those same topics . If you take my upper division human motor control class , you're going to get a heavy dose of athlete expertise and flow .

But you're also going to dive deep into the world of Parkinson's disease and what happens when we lose the ability to move our body the way we want when we want . I think they're both fascinating areas of interest .

I've certainly in my professional career now slanted it heavily towards the upper possibility space of human performance , but I'm always really interested in what's happening in the Parkinson's world . Still , I follow that stuff closely .

You have shown throughout this conversation how well you are at explaining things in your skill set and communicating such complex ideas where you have a knowledge base . But your rate , my professor is over the roof as well . I haven't looked in a while . I know people usually avoid those topics .

I'm wondering , because you've dealt with such an array of people you deal with students , you work with the best of the best . You work with experts in their craft . What advice do you have for people to get motivated , to get excited about the idea of chasing their passion ? I see this as again that thing to reach for , that thing to look at and go .

I want to get good at something . I want to get excited about something in my own life . What advice do you have for people in that circumstance ?

I wish , when I was doing my PhD , that the Hubertman Lab podcast existed , for just one example . Or , when I was trying to understand the inner mind of an athlete , that Michael Gervais Finding Mastery podcast existed . Podcasts are just one example . There's all the audio books . There's free access to research in many , many places .

Now there is so many places where you can go and learn from the best people and get an education . That doesn't mean you have to be in the ivory tower of the academia across the street . This is a great time to be alive and to learn things that you would not have had access to even 10 years ago .

Find , sit down and ask yourself what are the places you'd like to go . One of the first things I do when I work with people is just have them sit down and write out some goals and have a very specific goals setting strategy that I'd use . What are the big high hard goals you would like to achieve in a year or two years or five years ? Great .

You want to win a gold medal at the next Olympics ? Great , okay , let's put that on the map . But what are you going to do tomorrow ? And we set a bunch of process goals ? How are you going to sleep ? What are you going to do about your sleep , if that's an issue for you ? How are you going to fuel your body ?

What kind of mental skills are you going to work on ? What are the physical skills you're going to work on ? And then you get a bucket of process goals and these are the things you can do every day , every week , so that by the time two , three years come around , the next Olympics roll around .

You're in a much better place If all you do is set that big high hard goal . Like I always say , like a goal without a process is a wish , if you can put into place those everyday steps , those things you can do . Read James Clear Atomic Habits what it's all about .

Right , it's a great book on this sort of an idea , but think about those little things and don't underestimate the value of doing those little things every day and moving yourself one percent closer to the big goal , and maybe by the time that goal . It's time to see if you can achieve that goal . Maybe you get there . But hey , you know what ?

Even if you don't , you're going to be a lot further down the road in the direction of your goal than you were when you started .