A Wall Street Journal bestseller.

In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and firsthand reporting with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes like big wave legend Laird Hamilton, big mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of flow, an optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best.

Building a bridge between the extreme and the mainstream, The Rise of Superman explains how these athletes are using flow to do the impossible and how we can use this information to radically accelerate performance in our own lives.

At its core, this is a book about profound possibility; about what is actually possible for our species; about where--if anywhere--our limits lie.

National Bestseller

CNBC and Strategy + Business Best Business Book of the Year

It's the biggest revolution you've never heard of, and it's hiding in plain sight. Over the past decade, Silicon Valley executives like Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk, Special Operators like the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, and maverick scientists like Sasha Shulgin and Amy Cuddy have turned everything we thought we knew about high performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising short cut. They're harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition.

New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler and high performance expert Jamie Wheal spent four years investigating the leading edges of this revolution--from the home of SEAL Team Six to the Googleplex, the Burning Man festival, Richard Branson's Necker Island, Red Bull's training center, Nike's innovation team, and the United Nations' Headquarters. And what they learned was stunning: In their own ways, with differing languages, techniques, and applications, every one of these groups has been quietly seeking the same thing: the boost in information and inspiration that altered states provide.

Today, this revolution is spreading to the mainstream, fueling a trillion dollar underground economy and forcing us to rethink how we can all lead richer, more productive, more satisfying lives. Driven by four accelerating forces--psychology, neurobiology, technology and pharmacology--we are gaining access to and insights about some of the most contested and misunderstood terrain in history. Stealing Fire is a provocative examination of what's actually possible; a guidebook for anyone who wants to radically upgrade their life.

After spending two years in bed with Lyme disease, Steven Kotler had lost everything: his health, his job, his girl, and, he was beginning to suspect, his mind. Kotler, not a religious man, suddenly found himself drawn to the sport of surfing as if it were the cornerstone of a new faith. Why, he wondered, when there was nothing left to believe in, could he begin to believe in something as unlikely as surfing? What was belief anyway? How did it work in the body, the brain, our culture, and human history? With the help of everyone from rebel surfers to rocket scientists, Kotler undertakes a three-year globetrotting quest. The results are a startling mix of big waves and bigger ideas: a surfer's journey into the biological underpinnings of belief itself.
Steven Kotler's novel The Angle Quickest for Flight was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and won the William L. Crawford IAFA Fantasy Award. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Discover, Outside, Details, Wired, Men's Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.
Praise for West of Jesus:
West of Jesus is one of the smartest books ever about the sport and religion of surfing.-Los Angeles Magazine
The ideal book for any readers who have ever asked themselves, 'How did surfing take over my life?' Kotler brings us closer to the answers via a wild, globe-trotting journey in search of surfing's much-referenced but rarely discussed spiritual side.-Los Angeles Times
A surprisingly entertaining nonfiction account of his own spiritual quest through surfing... Kotler is often laugh-out-loud funny.-San Francisco Chronicle
Kotler's tale starts slow and then, like a seasoned surfer calibrating his board to his ride, monumentally catches stride...Call it mysterioso or the oceanic feeling, what Kotler's seeking is nothing less than the big explanation.-Village Voice

New York Times Bestseller

Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers--athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more--who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams much more attainable for all of us.

What does it take to accomplish the impossible? What does it take to shatter our limitations, exceed our expectations, and turn our biggest dreams into our most recent achievements?

We are capable of so much more than we know--that's the message at the core of The Art of Impossible. Building upon cutting-edge neuroscience and over twenty years of research, bestselling author, peak performance expert and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, Steven Kotler lays out a blueprint for extreme performance improvement. If you want to aim high, here is the playbook to make it happen!

Inspirational and aspirational, pragmatic and accessible, The Art of Impossible is a life-changing experience disguised as a how-to manual for peak performance that anyone can use to shoot for the stars . . . space-suit, not included.

Are you on the cusp of greatness? Do you have untapped potential and talents just waiting to be released? Read this book to learn the same creative problem-solving methodology (Design Thinking) used extensively at Stanford, Google, IDEO, and Apple. This guide will unlock your personal potential, and that of your team and your business. By exploring the intersection of Design Thinking and strengths-finding, innovation expert John K. Coyle demonstrates what most high achievers intuitively know-that each one of us possesses a unique combination of strengths, talents, skills and capabilities to achieve breakthrough performance-but may need a code to unlock them. Design for Strengths delivers the process, tools and mindsets required to find and maximize your hidden potential. Illuminated by a captivating narrative of Olympic training and competition, Coyle demonstrates how he used the Design Thinking process and mindset to hack the sport of speedskating and win an Olympic silver medal. This book contains real-life examples of how individuals and organizations can use Design Thinking to define the right problem, and to ask and answer a better question. Instead of how do I fix my weaknesses? ask how can I design for my strengths? More than a dozen leading experts contributed to this book, including Steven Kotler, David and Tom Kelley, David Eagleman, Daniel Coyle, Dave Evans and Chip Conley, as well as Olympic gold medalists Apolo Ohno and Meryl Davis. Read the book to expose a hidden-in-plain-sight secret. We all contain the capacity to do something extraordinary--if we design for it.