Fireside Chat with Jamie Wheal, Executive Director of the Flow Genome Project, and Jesse Richman, 2 x World Champion Big Air Kitesurfer
Last week I kicked off a discussion with Jamie Wheal and Jesse Richman on Jesse’s career arc of winning the Red Bull King of the Air twice, coming back from an injury, and how he gets into his perfect flow state.
Jamie and Jesse also unpacked how Jesse hacked “athlete self-sabotage,” gained active recovery, and practiced non-attachment so that he really could “have it all by letting it [singular focus on winning the competition] go.”
Jamie Wheal is the Executive Director of the Flow Genome Project and co-author of the Pulitzer nominated global bestseller, Stealing Fire. He is an expert on peak performance and leadership, specializing in the neuroscience and application of flow states. Jamie has advised everyone from the U.S. Naval War College and Special Operations Command and the owners of NFL, NBA, MLB and Premier League teams, to Red Bull athletes and the executives of Google, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, Cisco, The Bohemian Club and the Young Presidents’ Organization.
Jesse Richman is one of the best big air kitesurfers in the world. He’s a Two Time World Champion Big Air Kitesurfer and International Team Rider for North Kiteboarding and Mystic. He competed in and won Red Bull King of the Air 2020 in front of a 10,000-person crowd in South Africa.
Here’s a link to the recording:
Some highlights:
7:05 Jamie and Jesse talk about how it was different for him to win his first Red Bull King of the Air in 2013, how he broke both legs the following year in that event, then went on to win his second one last year in Capetown, South Africa
22:25 How Jesse’s training and mindset changed from previous competitions, which allowed him to tap into the unconscious and get more into the zone
From Jesse,“If I’m having a good time, I’m going to be riding well. I wanted to take the thinking part out of it so I looked at my heats and you get scored on 3 tricks…It doesn’t need to grow through the contest. I just needed to land those 3 tricks. I formulated my plan early on and every time I’d kite, I’d practice those 3 tricks and as we got closer to the event, I wasn’t that concerned…yes, I really wanted to win but slowly I didn’t care as much.”
30:21 Jesse talks about how what former professional extreme skiier and author of The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won’t Work and What to Do Instead Kristen Ulmer said at a 2017 Flow Camp resonated with him in that a lot of athletes feel a sense of relief after they get injured as it’s a way out from the pressure of performance. Instead Jesse focused on having fun with what he does and realized he couldn’t do that if he was injured so he had to rebuild what excited him as an athlete.
41:03 Jesse talks about his 5 minute, snow kiting flight off a mountain in Norway with a 17m kite
53:04 Growing up around so many pro water athletes in Maui, Jesse discusses what it meant to have these role models and what role sports diversification played in his life
59:49 Jamie talks about his sequel to “Stealing Fire,” entitled “Recapture the Rapture,” which is his blueprint to design peak experiences at scale that enable people to “wake up, grow up, and show up.”
I can’t wait to read Jamie’s book coming out June 16, 2021 and love the motto he shared “Float More, Steer Less. Love More, Fear Less!” To learn more about your unique entry points to flow, check out the Flow Profile Quiz: https://www.flowgenomeproject.com/flow-profile
Hope you can join us for our next Fireside Chat, register on the ACTAI Global website!
___
ACTAI Global is a community of Athletes, Conservationists, Technologists, Artists and Innovators that bring their collective knowledge, energy and social capital together in ‘active gatherings’. The community supports projects benefiting environmental conservation and economic empowerment via entrepreneurship. Together we have brought to life a marine conservation area with Mission Blue, supported other conservation organizations such as Ocean Elders, Virgin Unite, Sea Shepard Conservation Society, and Lonely Whale, and catalyzed gatherings around the world including Australia Based WestTechFest, the Necker Blockchain Summit, and the Extreme Tech Challenge.
