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Flow State
“Flow State” aka, being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. (wikipedia)
Flow feels like focus and effort come easily and naturally. The activity is invigorating and energizing. Losing track of time or time slows down. A feeling of complete presence and being in the moment. High sensory and instinctual awareness – seeing things as they happen, instinctually reacting and intuitively seeing a couple steps ahead with anticipation using the lightening-fast reflexive brain, not the slow-analytical brain.
Because flow produces such a positive state of mind it is intrinsically rewarding – the process, mindset and energizing effects but it also becomes extrinsically rewarding, as the person continues the activity, just through the sheer fact of adding hours of work, effort and time to the ability, it develops a mastery of the skill, which people notice, encourage, validate and reward.
i.e. For an athlete, dancer or someone that uses their physical ability to have to perform – kinesthetics, physical sensory and awareness are their natural ability, the flow state they naturally gravitate to. Early in their childhood they found a state of mind that let them feel free, limitless, presence, enthusiasm, inspired. And as the people around them saw their talent and encouraged their ability, creating an inner/outer affirming loop.
Different people find different flow states, could be writing, drawing, math, reading, creating, thinking, leading, serving. Something that taps into the best of them, the best of who they are, the best of what they can give to the world, the best of how they want the world to receive and see them.
This is everyone’s natural and dominant mindset or personality function. Most of the time people are able to get into these mindsets pretty easily and frequently, but sometimes there’s a disruption of this flow state or it can also happen when trying to do something different, something that doesn’t come naturally or is out of the “comfort zone”
The biggest blocker that disrupts flow or prevents someone from getting into flow is the inner voice. The inner voice sounds like desires, expectations, feelings, judgement. “I’m doing bad/good.” “I’m going to do bad/good.” “I want to/don’t want to…” “People are going to think…” “I think I’m…” “I feel like…” “I’m good at this” I’m bad at this” etc.
This is the ego-mind. The voices are critical, self-judgments, trying to prevent failure, embarrassment and rejection. The ego will sabotage your attempts and ultimately hinder or even stop your progress.
If someone has ever told you “you think too much” or “get out of your own head”, and you find the voices in your head sounding like those self-judgments, turn them off. These voices might come up, when the activity is uncomfortable, challenging, stressful, the stakes are too high, or it doesn’t play into our strengths and natural abilities.
A couple tools to use…
Reframe the intent – whatever skill or ability you’re supposed to do or perform, just have the intention of being present and in the moment. Remove the intent or motivation of doing them to produce a result, outcome, prove something, or to be valued to be good or bad.
Reframe the focus – put your focus on a specific task or action, instead of the activity as a whole, drill down into a more granular, singular action.
Reframe the expectation – whatever the result or outcome should be, don’t focus on what hasn’t happened yet and don’t let that influence how you approach the activity – you might over-try which may have a negative impact. Don’t try to force a result or outcome.
Reframe the context – take the approach of using the activity as a development progression instead of a final test of fatalistically determining your value, talent level, ability, potential and people’s perception of you. It’s not a test, you’re not being written off.
Reframe the stakes – most likely in everyday situations nobody is going to die or lose something significant based on your performance, at least voluntarily. (If so, then you would have probably already learned the skills to have been put in that situation, i.e. doctor) But even if you’re a doctor, there are plenty of place that are out of your comfort zone.
I know we live in a win or lose, cut through society. We need to win all day, everyday. Failure is unacceptable, and you’re labelled a loser and should just quit. But failure is okay, losing is alright. It’s not the end of the world. You will get another chance, maybe not the same exact chance, maybe something better, maybe something less. With a growth mindset, failure or not succeeding is just feedback on where we are on the development roadmap. It’s okay to be where you are in the progress of development as long as you have a growth mindset and continually progress your development. Use the feedback as an indication of what skills we can develop and work on, maybe it was a lack of preparedness, readiness or development. It doesn’t matter, use that feedback and continue growing and advancing. Make sure the stakes you have in your mind are not outweighing the stakes in reality.
Above all, have grace and compassion with yourself. It’s a process. Facing challenges, adversity and stress even while using our innate talents is difficult. So using our secondary talents or going outside our comfort zone is even more difficult, but it’s important to explore so that we can learn and understand other people. Having grace and compassion for ourselves is also growing in empathy, understanding and compassion for each other.
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Good. Better. Best.
I don’t think our decisions or actions are so easily judged between what’s “good” and “bad”. Seems like we could place any of our actions and decisions on one of these spectrums below. And maybe use it as a compass, pointing our desires to try and progress and improve toward what’s “best”.
Good – What’s good for you, completely subjective and individualistic. What’s “good” can be anything, result, outcome, experience, reward, etc. Could even be “selfish” and doesn’t have to benefit anyone else. Might be purely emotional, temporary and not necessarily produce a qualitative, lasting improvement.
Better – It’s not only good for you but also benefits someone else and/or the people around you, not just emotionally or short term but also produces a qualitative improvement. What “good” means is less subjective and more objectively qualitative.
Best – It’s not only good for you and benefits others but can be repeated consistently, producing similar positive outcomes and qualitative improvements. And as a rule of thumb can be adopted by others so they can better themselves and the people around them. What’s “good” would be even more “objective”, to the extent most people would agree and would be commonly accepted as being “good”.
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The Memoirist
Go experience something that will spark your senses. A get together, a sporting event, a delicious meal with friends, a show or performance… an experience you can lose yourself in, an experience that becomes memorable because of the emotions and energy, the shared experience of how it made everyone collectively feel, more than the actual event.
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Baseline
One day I decided to make sprinting to be my baseline daily movement. I realized that if I don’t sprint or don’t do any daily exercise or movement my body, mindset and output level would drop. My body wouldn’t be in a “ready state”, it would conserve energy and usage and try to find efficiencies, i.e. get lazy. Muscles would weaken, joints would stiffen, my central nervous system wasn’t as activated.
My theory was that if I made sprinting my everyday routine, as vigorous and intense as it is, I can make it my baseline daily movement. As baseline as like getting up, walking to the office, walking the dog or a brisk jog.
After about 2 years of sprinting everyday, I’m pretty satisfied with the results. I’ve had to make adjustments, experimented, rethink approaches but all in the effort of learning and developing. I’m definitely faster and a stronger runner.
My starts, speed, explosiveness, power and endurance have all improved. My legs are stronger and developing more muscle. My flexibility and mobility have all increased. My tendons and joints are a lot stronger, regaining and in some cases surpassing my previous pliability, recoil and bounce ability. I’ve increased my plyo-ability, improved my run mechanics, ground force production. My central nervous system is firing. I’ve gone through and fixed, plantar fasciitis, achilles tendonitis, knee tendonitis, tight hamstrings, tight lower back.
I wanted to get my body in such a “ready state” that I could wakeup in the morning, get out of bed and start running or jumping. And I’m very close, I can do some bounces do some mobility, and takes me only a few seconds to get warmed up. Whereas, before I’d be so stiff and cold out of bed, it’d take me all morning to loosen up.
This is just my theory about baselines, establishing baselines and pushing that line out a little bit further everyday, progressing, developing. With not just sprinting or workouts but anything you want to improve or develop.
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What I’ve learned through the art of screenwriting
It’s been like peeling back the curtain on the hidden and invisible. Revelations and uncovering truths…
- Seeing the belief systems we build for ourselves and living constrained to limiting beliefs.
- What others say about us, their judgements and perceptions and how that affects what we think about ourselves.
- Talent is just a measurement for the rate of speed of acquiring a skill.
- Fear is the invisible man with the subtle, powerful influencing voice.
- Everyone has a talent and gift to share with the world, it is their responsibility to bring it to fruition so it can be enjoyed and experienced.
- Results and expectations are desires that steal from the joy and energy of being present and in the moment – and also the intention and focus required to just “do the work”.
The outward journey of learning to write has been an inward journey of knowing myself better, having a little better understanding of who I am and seeing with more clarity of the person in the mirror – emotionally, physically, spiritually, psychologically, socially. It has also better equipped me to have more compassion, grace and forgiveness with myself and consequently others.
I believe this can be or should be true for anyone that has a “mountain” in front of them, whatever that “mountain” might be.
Another truth I learned… “Everyone has a story to tell”.
A journey that seems daunting, impossible and beyond themselves, everyone has a story to tell, a story that tells of overcoming their greatest fears with courage, grace and compassion to come out the other side enriched, enlightened, enabled.
The greatest thing I found for myself, my voice, what I want to say, to share and connect with others… the stories I’m compelled to write and want to tell, stories between the conflict of fear and love, heroes that face their greatest fears to become their greatest self, to bring a new understanding of grace, awareness and compassion.
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Emotion-less
Fear, the absence of Love.
Love, the absence of Fear.I’m curious, are emotions just different shades of Love and Fear? Can we characterize any emotion using either Love or Fear in the definition?
i.e…
Jealous – fear of being getting lesser attention, validation. Fear of not being as important compared to another person.
I’m sure the first initial reaction would be, “No way, human emotions are so complex and different, they can’t just be oversimplified like that.” Maybe, I don’t know. I’m just curious.
Okay maybe it’s not about redefining emotions, maybe Fear and Love are in a different taxonomy and hierarchy than emotions. Maybe it could be that the source of emotions like jealousy, anger, hate is a Fear based thought. Jealousy, anger, hate are just narratives we tell ourselves, with Fear being the narrator.
I’m also starting to think about Love differently too. Love is not just for “lovers” or for “falling in love” – not just defined through a romance, kinship or special relationship. I’m starting to think Love is being able to be in the presence with someone without reservation, defenses, pretense sharing the same presence, energy and “vibes”, a moment of empathy, compassion and understanding without fear, judgment or self-awareness.
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Re:invent
Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself. Be bold. Be vulnerable. Step out of who you are.
Have that scary, uncomfortable internal dialogue. Where am I? Am I where I want to be? How did I get here? Is what I’m doing going to help me get to where I want to go?
By reinventing yourself, we go through a process of “moving on”. Not holding onto things we should let go. We learn not to define ourselves by not just our mistakes or “failures” but also the past wins and old successes. Everyday is a new day, requiring a new you.
By reinventing yourself, we give ourselves permission to be wrong. And it’s not the end of the world or your belief system doesn’t come crashing down. To not have to entrench yourself, be closed-minded and “die on the hill”. You can allow for new information to be pertinent and open, what you thought used to be “right” can just be a progression of gathering more information and experiences and just a landmark on the roadmap of learning.
By reinventing yourself, we can reprioritize what’s really important. We can ask ourselves, is this “thing” that I think is so important, that I identify with who I am, might not be exactly what I thought it was or is as important as I once thought. We can realign our priorities and what’s important when we let go of things we think make us who we are but really don’t.
We are a culmination of not just our experiences, but our learned experiences, cognitive patterns and processes. Some might view that as being limited by those things, locked into how we were raised, what we learned, our environment but in fact we can be empowered by them.
By reinventing yourself, we can adopt new mindsets, ideas, growth, development, progression, creativity, meet new people. New thoughts and patterns fire in different parts of our brain, bringing to life new abilities, capabilities, possibilities.
We must be the only species that is able to completely reinvent who we are, based on our environment and circumstances. The trajectory might not be going down a positive outcome but to have the capacity and decision-making ability to choose a different way, toward a different outcome contrary to what should happen to what we would like to happen.
Reinventing yourself is not easy, it requires work, boldness and vulnerability. The way an animal when changing its shell, is exposed and vulnerable but needs to do it to grow and get a bigger shell. Otherwise the shell will be too small and stifling, what once was useful becomes a hinderance. The way old beliefs and patterns can be limiting and keep us small and closed.