Not a lot of writers can say they have broken just shy of 100 bones in their research for a story. When Playboy published my feature "Superhuman" in the February 2012 issue, I didn't realize I was still only at the beginning of my reporting. The story is about athletes using flow states to achieve unbelievable performance. Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform our absolute best. It's an idea that I started researching in the 1990s—requiring me to spend a lot of my time chasing professional athletes around mountains.
As a non-professional athlete trying to keep up, I broke all those bones along the way. This included over 75 hairline cracks in my legs (compound fractures that accumulated over time). At the time I was writing the Playboy story, my right arm was in a cast from trying to jump off a 35 foot cliff on skis. I screwed up the landing, went arm first into a cliff and nearly severed my thumb from my hand.
Now in 2014, I've established a research foundation (Flowgenomeproject.co) and have completed a new book, The Rise of Superman (in bookstores now)—which tells this story in its complete form. Here is the original Playboy article. If I had only known then what I know now....
We like our geniuses a certain way here in America. If they are scientifically minded, we prefer them wild coiffed, calculation spouting, so far beyond the confines of standard intelligence that only exotic metaphors apply. If they are artistic, we like them exiled on Main Street, melancholy and misanthropic, occasionally drug addled, often drunk. If they are rich geniuses, we prefer them to have begun poor. If they are poor geniuses, we want them once rich and now, having lost it all, ferociously staging a comeback. What we don't desire is genius naked, spread-eagled and 40 feet off the ground—but that is where this story begins.
Now in 2014, I've established a research foundation (Flowgenomeproject.co) and have completed a new book, The Rise of Superman (in bookstores now)—which tells this story in its complete form. Here is the original Playboy article. If I had only known then what I know now...
