Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success

by Brad Stulberg

Start with just 1 minute and gradually increase the duration.

mindfulness meditation increases gray matter in the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.

the prefrontal cortex serves as the brain’s command and control center. It allows us to respond thoughtfully to situations instead of instinctively reacting.

mindfulness allows us to recognize that we are having a stress response rather than automatically being overcome by it.

a strong prefrontal cortex lets us choose how we want to respond to stress.

What they saw on the inside mirrored exactly what they saw on the outside.

The amygdala is one of the less evolved structures in our brain.

Is this the lizard brain?

the “emotional center” of the brain, the amygdala controls our most basic instincts, such as hunger and fear.

Even after the scalding-hot wire was removed, the novices remained in a stressed-out and emotional state.

The expert meditators,

were able to “turn off” their stress response, disassociating the stimulus from an extended emotional reaction.

experienced meditators aren’t the only experts who can actively choose how to respond to stress. The elite runners that Steve coaches can, too.

When pain sets in during a hard, long workout, everyday runners, and even pretty good ones, often get wrapped up in it. They think to themselves, “Oh crap, this already hurts so much and I’ve got a long way to go.”

It’s not that elite runners don’t feel pain and discomfort during their hard workouts, it’s just that they react differently.

they have in their minds what Steve calls a “calm conversation.”

Steve’s best runners choose how they respond to the stress of a workout.

Steve hasn’t scanned their brains, but we’d wager that if he did, he’d find their prefrontal cortexes are bursting with gray matter.

how to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I didn’t try to force my way through the pain or fight against it. Instead, I reminded myself this is normal and I relaxed.”

it was the improvement in his mental fitness that allowed him to fully express it.

Research shows that following hard training, the HRV of elite athletes returns to baseline far faster than the HRV of nonelites.

Perhaps the adage that hard work separates the best from the rest only explains part of the picture. The best rest harder, too.

In the middle of a challenge, mindfulness helps you remain calm and collected.

After a challenge, mindfulness lets you choose to turn off stress and transition to a more restful state.

when you enter into that restful state, “rest” turns out to be anything but passive.

•Frequency trumps duration. It’s best to meditate daily, even if that means keeping individual sessions short.

As with everything else. Repetition is more beneficial than duration.

•Have “calm conversations” during stressful periods.

Pausing to take a few deep breaths helps to activate the prefrontal cortex,

Raichle found that when people zone out and daydream, a particular part of the brain consistently became active.

even when it feels like our brains are “off,” a powerful system, the default-mode network, is running in the background, completely unnoticed by our conscious awareness.

What are you doing when the answers to tough problems you’ve been grappling with suddenly pop into your head?

Odds are, you aren’t trying to solve them. It’s more likely that you’re zoning out in the shower.

maybe your best ideas come to you when you are on a run or a walk.

Lin Manuel Miranda,

“A good idea doesn’t come when you’re doing a million things. The good idea comes in the moment of rest.

Researchers have found that despite spending the vast majority of our waking hours in effortful thought, over 40 percent of our creative ideas manifest during breaks.

Often, if we step away from intentional and active thinking and let our minds rest instead, the missing piece mysteriously appears.

we must turn to the difference between the conscious and subconscious minds.

We may sit and stare at the computer screen or the whiteboard trying to figure something out, but so long as we’re still trying, we’re likely to fail.

It’s only when we stop trying that our conscious mind fades into the background and our subconscious mind (the default-mode network) takes over.

in the vast forests bordering the narrow “if-then” highway that our conscious mind runs on, where our creative ideas lie.

the subconscious mind is always working, dully running in the background.

it’s only when we turn off the conscious mind, shifting into a state of rest, that insights from t...

A mathematician named D...

he created a parallel universe for making impossible math problems possible.

“I’ve got a master’s and PhD from Harvard, but no undergraduate degree. Oh well.”

Relieved of the need to fake it in other disciplines, Goss went on a tear in math.

Goss has a brilliant conscious mind. But it’s his subconscious mind, and his courage to step away from work and rest so that he can tap into it, that deserves equal celebration.

“It’s almost like the sole reason you do the work is to set the stage for what happens when you step away.”

he was following the art of periodization: stressing his mind and then letting it recover only...