Stealing Fire

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 peak performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising shortcut to peak performance. They're harnessing rare and controversial altered 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 ecstatic 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 the human potential movement and what’s actually possible; a guidebook for anyone who wants to radically upgrade their life.

This provocative examination provides a guidebook for radically upgrading your life by exploring:

The Science of High Performance: Discover how four accelerating forces—psychology, neurobiology, technology, and pharmacology—are unlocking rare states of consciousness.Insights from Elite Operators: Go inside SEAL Team Six, the Googleplex, and Richard Branson’s Necker Island to see how the world’s top performers are using these states to outperform the competition.The Trillion-Dollar Revolution: Learn about the underground economy fueling this movement and what it means for the future of our lives, work, and culture.A Practical Guide to Flow States: Move beyond grit and 10,000 hours with a surprising shortcut to feeling and performing your best.

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