Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

by Steven Kotler

Selflessness, Timelessness, Effortlessness, and Richness, or STER for short.

This means that the self is more about movement through different forms of consciousness than about defending and identifying with any one form.” By stepping outside ourselves, we gain perspective. We become objectively aware of our costumes rather than subjectively fused with them. We realize we can take them off, discard those that are worn out or no longer fit, and even create new ones. That’s the paradox of selflessness—by periodically losing our minds we stand a better chance of finding ourselves.

you borrow from tomorrow, and tomorrow you have less time than you have today. . . . It’s a very costly loan.”

“When you are . . . fully aware of your surroundings and of yourself in the present, [this] increases the time that you swim with your head above water, when you can see both potential dangers and pleasures. . . . You are aware of your position and your destination. You can make corrections to your path.” In a recent study published in Psychological Science,

These days, we’re drowning in information, but starving for motivation. Despite a chirpy self-improvement market peppering us with endless tips and tricks on how to live better, healthier, wealthier lives, we’re struggling to put these techniques into action.

First, creativity is essential for solving complex problems—the kinds we often face in a fast-paced world. Second, we have very little success training people to be more creative. And there’s a pretty simple explanation for this failure: we’re trying to train a skill, but what we really need to be training is a state of mind.

There’s a bit of southern folk wisdom that says1 “you can’t read the label while you’re sitting inside the jar.”

Einstein’s quote “you cannot solve a problem at the level at which it was created” is invariably used to encourage higher, more expansive solutions. But the opposite is equally true. Sometimes, lower, more basic solutions can have just as big an impact.

Transformational leaders not only regulated their own nervous systems better than most; they also regulated other people’s.

So do the hard thing and the rest becomes much easier: Enjoy the state, but be sure to do the work. And no matter how tempting it is: Don’t become a Bliss Junkie.

This leaves us with four rules of thumb to carry into our exploration of these states. It’s not about you and it’s not about now help us balance ego inflation and time distortion. While don’t become a bliss junky and don’t dive too deep ensure that we don’t get seduced by the sensations and information that arise in altered states.

“Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving27 up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”