Day 200 of 365 - Awakening to Flow
A book simply entitled Flow was published in 1990 by researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to provide information in layman's terms about research into how a flow state is achieved in different areas of life. It had sort of a cult following for awhile and became a fad topic for magazine articles and talk shows. I remember a work colleague being quite excited about it at the time, but it seemed something rather inaccessible for me, so I didn't pay much attention. Now, I have the book on my Kindle but have only read about half of it so far.
I used to think that being in a state of flow was something very Zen, occasional and 'out there', not usually within reach for the average person unless it happened by serendipity. From an online course I'm doing with teacher and mentor Robin Rice, of the Be Who You Are website, I have learned a different perspective about flow. As one of her free classes in her website library, she has an audio entitled Growing Through Flow States. I listened to it today as a component of a bigger program.
So what is flow, and why should we care about it anyway? Flow happens when you are immersed in an experience so deeply that you lose your self and move more into a sense of oneness. What I'm learning from the class is that it is not just a random experience. It is a state we can actually cultivate under certain conditions. Flow has a very focused but effortless feeling about it and is a state where we feel fully alive and in the present moment.
The plethora of research and writing in the areas of neuroscience and neuroplasticity in more recent years has helped create more understanding about what it takes to get into a flow state. Here are some of the interesting things I learned.
If you are doing something at which you are highly skilled, but which has a low level of challenge, you will become bored and flow will not happen. It will feel like, same old, same old. On the other side of the spectrum, if you are doing something highly challenging with low skill, you will be anxious, which is also not conducive to flow. For flow to happen, you need to be highly skilled at what you are doing and have a high level of confidence that you can meet a certain level of challenge. It's necessary to work hard and be doing something novel with skills you are already very good at.
What's surprising is that hard work concept, that flow is not just tuning out. Conversely, it's because you are working hard and in peak performance that you have an experience of elation and flow. When you are in it, it does feel effortless though. The other interesting concept shared was the importance of rest and recovery to integrate what you have learned while in a flow state. When we are trying to make a significant change in any area, failure to rest and recover after a major effort will result in a standstill. Trying to push through is counterproductive.
So, for things that are important to us, it's desirable to stay somewhere in between boredom and anxiety about our level of challenge. If something we used to enjoy a lot has become boring, we need to somehow increase the challenge level to bring a more novel experience to it. That way we can have more of a sense of mastery.
At the same time, it is normal to have plateaus and we should come to expect that as well. One of the statements used in the class was 'struggle more gracefully and recover more thoroughly'. To avoid long periods of boredom, it's helpful to have practices which keep improving your base skills, such as meditation or breath work. It also helps to keep stimulating our brains with new learning in whatever way is interesting.
I learned something new today from listening to that audio, and it's something I can apply to an activity that I like but which has lost it's novelty for me. I'm grateful for this class offering and this new learning. We can always learn something new, no matter our age.
I used to think that being in a state of flow was something very Zen, occasional and 'out there', not usually within reach for the average person unless it happened by serendipity. From an online course I'm doing with teacher and mentor Robin Rice, of the Be Who You Are website, I have learned a different perspective about flow. As one of her free classes in her website library, she has an audio entitled Growing Through Flow States. I listened to it today as a component of a bigger program.
So what is flow, and why should we care about it anyway? Flow happens when you are immersed in an experience so deeply that you lose your self and move more into a sense of oneness. What I'm learning from the class is that it is not just a random experience. It is a state we can actually cultivate under certain conditions. Flow has a very focused but effortless feeling about it and is a state where we feel fully alive and in the present moment.
The plethora of research and writing in the areas of neuroscience and neuroplasticity in more recent years has helped create more understanding about what it takes to get into a flow state. Here are some of the interesting things I learned.
If you are doing something at which you are highly skilled, but which has a low level of challenge, you will become bored and flow will not happen. It will feel like, same old, same old. On the other side of the spectrum, if you are doing something highly challenging with low skill, you will be anxious, which is also not conducive to flow. For flow to happen, you need to be highly skilled at what you are doing and have a high level of confidence that you can meet a certain level of challenge. It's necessary to work hard and be doing something novel with skills you are already very good at.
What's surprising is that hard work concept, that flow is not just tuning out. Conversely, it's because you are working hard and in peak performance that you have an experience of elation and flow. When you are in it, it does feel effortless though. The other interesting concept shared was the importance of rest and recovery to integrate what you have learned while in a flow state. When we are trying to make a significant change in any area, failure to rest and recover after a major effort will result in a standstill. Trying to push through is counterproductive.
So, for things that are important to us, it's desirable to stay somewhere in between boredom and anxiety about our level of challenge. If something we used to enjoy a lot has become boring, we need to somehow increase the challenge level to bring a more novel experience to it. That way we can have more of a sense of mastery.
At the same time, it is normal to have plateaus and we should come to expect that as well. One of the statements used in the class was 'struggle more gracefully and recover more thoroughly'. To avoid long periods of boredom, it's helpful to have practices which keep improving your base skills, such as meditation or breath work. It also helps to keep stimulating our brains with new learning in whatever way is interesting.
I learned something new today from listening to that audio, and it's something I can apply to an activity that I like but which has lost it's novelty for me. I'm grateful for this class offering and this new learning. We can always learn something new, no matter our age.
Comments
Post a Comment