Introduction
I am a firm believer that the brain holds incredible potential much of which we are not yet aware of. I’ve come to understand that the brain and our thoughts hold such power over the quality of our experiences, and our life.
Flow and its related concepts play an important role in determining the quality of our experiences and are tightly linked with happiness, fulfilment, and confidence and thus greatly influence the quality of our lives. In the process of trying to understand and utilise flow, I have gained a lot of tools which are powerful aids in my ability to find flow. I will share these tools in the hopes it may help the reader in the same way it has helped me. With this paper, I intend to demonstrate the importance of flow on my well-being and performance by sharing a personal narrative.
About me
When I was 21 years old, I had just graduated with my Bachelors having studied Neuroscience and Psychology. I have always considered good health to be positive health, not the lack of illness or problems but the ability to work towards the pinnacle of our mental and biological performance while being happy at the same time. With my passion for neurobiology and psychology, I sought to understand how these fields affect our positive health. Over the last three years, I had additionally become especially eager to understand and optimise performance and productivity for my career and studies in particular. Therefore, when I learned about flow, I thought it was the perfect amalgamation of my most passionate interests.
I had initially understood flow as what I wanted it to be at the time, a hack that will help shortcut my way to peak performance and success. I am an incredibly competitive person with high ambitions and a drive to be highly successful in my career. For these reasons, I was very interested in how flow could help me achieve my optimal performance in my work and in sports.
My Experience
Post Bachelor’s degree, I got to work immediately across several different sectors. Firstly, to explore and pursue my interests, I started an internship with two organisations in the fields of personal development and human flourishing, GEDI Training and the Flow Centre. To support me financially, I also worked various part-time jobs over this period. I was proud of this busy schedule. Looking back, however, I struggled. I think I could’ have handled all of this had I had no other obligations, but as it turned out, I had unexpected duties and stressors; such as helping my mother with her new career which had been derailed by COVID, constant house hopping, and worst of all, an incredibly strained long-distance relationship. During this time, I was so caught up in this high achieving mentality that all I could focus on was my career-related commitments. I truly expected myself to excel significantly in all of them. I had completely underestimated and neglected the responsibility and commitment a long-distance relationship required from me and I was failing in this department massively. I had started to disregard things that used to be important to me to stay focused on work; and suddenly my treasured partner of over 2 years had suddenly become a source of significant stress and negativity in my life. It felt like I could never make up my mind on what was more important, my partner or my work performance and being unable to give up on either but failing at both, I was under a lot of stress. My unrealistic expectations of how I “should” be dealing with these stressors served to constantly remind me that I was constantly failing.
I became too stressed, emotionally exhausted, and began to feel depressed over 6 months. Despite all of this, I still did not realise what I needed was to drop my obsession with career success and ego, lower my expectations, and pay proper attention and time to things that are truly meaningful to me. Instead, I continued to desperately pursue flow in my work in order to reach my goals as soon as possible—"only then would I be rid of all the stress and have the adequate resources to resolve my problems”, I would tell myself.
With the decline of my mental health and continued obsession to reach my goals, I was seeking flow out as a necessity. Flow could give me moments of extreme focus when my emotions and thoughts were absent; I would be happy with myself for the quality and quantity of my completed work. I had certainly learned a lot about how I can get into flow and what I should do, but I had several fundamental errors in my understanding which prevented me from experiencing anything more than deep concentration and immersion.
Eventually, at the height of my stress and burn-out, I had my first intense Flow experience.
During a bus ride home from a workday, I had my headphones on “listening” to music, but really just thinking of my to-do list, future plans, and things that “I should be worried about”. But, this time, I realised these intrusive thoughts were hijacking my experience. As a result, I was not in control of my interpretation of these experiences.
I turned up the volume to max to drown out the thoughts, closed my eyes, and focused all of my attention on the sensation of my breathing to bring me to the present moment. I then turned all of this attention to the music. This time, the same songs I always listened to were significantly more beautiful. I then started to visualise the instruments I could hear playing live in front of me in a pitch-black room. I could see an instrument playing at first, and eventually I could see the person playing it. Before long I could also see the rest of the musicians in the band alongside each other. With all of my attention on each and every instrument of the song, I began to feel completely immersed and found the music awe-inspiring and immensely beautiful. The usual distracting thoughts were long gone and to replace them a deep sense of joy, fun, and fulfilment. I don’t remember having any thoughts at this moment. It was an especially therapeutic moment for me. In the past month's of effortful ‘flow’, I had never experienced such an intensity of immersion, loss of self-consciousness, or such absence of thoughts.
This experience was greatly impactful and emotional for me. I believe this sensation of relief from stress was precisely why I started to seek out flow in my work. I began to pursue this experience over and over again whenever I could, using music as the gateway. Pursuing the experience purely because it felt great, I had no other agendas of enhancing my performance or achieving a certain outcome. Not only did my passion for Flow grow exponentially, I realised that I had become too obsessed over outcomes and performance and there was something much more valuable right in front of me the entire time.
From this point on, I found it easier to find states of flow due to the new attitude and perspective I held towards it. I truly started to appreciate what being in flow could do for my well-being, especially in this stressful period of my life. It also made me realise I must re-prioritise certain things in my life and tip the balance of self-improvement and self-acceptance in the favour of the latter. I had been getting in my own way of achieving peak performance by obsessing over the outcome rather than the journey and my happiness. It has only been 2 months since this time, yet I have learned an incredible amount more about flow which has been equally transformative for me. [CN1]
The Importance of Flow
Far too many people in our modern society feel as though they’re unhappy and unfulfilled. Many people feel that they are lacking things which if only they had, they would be happier. We tend to spend our time and money in the attempts to find happiness through material goods because we overestimate their value to our lives. If it were at least the case that once you reached that goal or made a certain amount of money your happiness would be genuine and lasting, then maybe it would be worth being unfulfilled for a couple of weeks, months, or even years. Fortunately, there is an overwhelming amount of research that shows us that beyond a basic amount, having more money does not make you happier, at least not for long.
Despite all of this knowledge, our culture constantly pushes us towards buying or reaching the next big thing and claims that will be the defining factor in our life satisfaction. How do they propose you get there? Through hard work and excellent performance. Because the norm reality is to work your hardest until retirement, many of us have this high performance, high achieving, hard-working mindset. That is a big reason why so many people are drawn to flow for its ability to improve their work performance. In reality, it is precisely in our desperate efforts to improve our performance for our future happiness that holds us back from achieving optimal experiences in the present. This outcome-oriented mindset is what makes many of us seek out flow but conversely debilitates our chances of finding it.
What is a life worth living?
It is of paramount importance to remember that the flow state was Csikszenmihalyi’s answer to the question; “What makes a life worth living?”. It is the state in which tens of thousands of people across the globe, across hundreds of professions and ages described when asked, “what did the best moments of your life feel like?”. There is a growing body of scientific research that indicates that “flow is highly correlated with happiness, both SWB (Subjective well-being) and PWB (Psychological well-being)” (Csikszentmihalyi). Not only that but that people who experience flow regularly develop a host of other positive traits such as “increased concentration, self-esteem, and performance.” (Csikszentmihalyi). Because these concepts and the very definition of flow and happiness are so inextricably linked, you can not have one without the other.
Aristotle was convinced that a genuinely happy life required the fulfilment of a broad range of conditions, including physical as well as mental well-being and this is something that science is uncovering to be true several millennia later. He also says that it is not enough to just have well-being across all domains without any aspect of the challenge in one’s life. For an ideal fulfilling life, we must stretch ourselves and regulate our well-being across all domains. If you are competitive like me, then you would agree that it’s easy to get caught up in self-improvement and becoming the best at something. Without this aspect of challenging myself, I could not imagine being fulfilled and happy in my life. However, this alone is not sustainable, nor will it lead to a fulfilling and happy life. Flow is the balance between the two and albeit complex and fleeting, a truly fruitful concept to understand and work into my life.
Although I have been mostly exploring the well-being aspect of flow and taking you through my journey from seeking out flow for peak performance to ‘peak well-being’, they are not mutually exclusive. They are both necessary for each other and flow covers both bases. As it happens, the conditions for feeling good and performing well are the same, it requires you to be present, approach the challenge with a mastery mindset, be intrinsically motivated, and participate in activities purely for the sake of doing it, etc. When all of these things align you can experience flow in which you feel amazing and perform at your best, the best of both worlds.
The value of learning about flow for me was in this understanding that peak experiences are not solely performance or well-being but the culmination of both. It has taught me that to be at your best, perform at your best in relationships, in sport, and at work, you must also feel at your best. It is when you prioritise this experience over absolutely everything else, that you can strike this balance.
My learning points
The first major lesson of my Flow journey was that it is very easy for me to become focused on goals, outcomes, and ego. I had overestimated my understanding of my well-being and my ability to regulate it. I had tipped the balance so far to the side of self-improvement that I experienced burn-out and felt depressed. Seeking out Flow for a performance boost was not an effective means for me to find it, nor a healthy one. Since then, I have developed a better understanding and with it, several key concepts and strategies that have been especially helpful to me. Below are some of the things which I remind myself to apply to everything and anything I do. Hopefully, it will be helpful to you too.
The first is to prioritise Flow and not any other agenda in a given activity. When doing an activity, especially if it is something that you are not excited to do, it is easy to feel unmotivated, frustrated, or anxious and thus perform sub optimally. In fact, an exercise we did during part of my Flow Coaching Accreditation helped me identify and understand the most dominant feelings which arise during such a challenging activity. It also helped me to reflect in why these feelings are there? What are they trying to do for me? In doing so, I was able to move past my resistance to them and realize that they are all there to serve a function, to help in some fashion.
The next step was then for me to ask those feelings whether they would help me find flow rather than be a hindrance. The answer, in this case, is usually ‘no’. Finally, I ask myself if I’m willing to prioritise the experience of being in Flow—over and above achieving an outcome, or to impress others. When I am able to do this, then the result of prioritising an optimal experience usually equates to me having fun, being present, learning, growing, all for the sake of it and not for an outcome. I embody an undistracted mind, increased intrinsic motivation, frustration disappearing, and the struggle becomes effortless. As a result, I feel fulfilled, satisfied, assured, and typically perform at my best.
Of course, there are many times where it's not so easy to intrinsically motivate yourself. The activity can be objectively boring, tedious and you may be bad at it. So how can we manipulate our intrinsic motivation during these circumstances? Developing the skills and tools to help you stack your intrinsic motivation and convert extrinsic motivators into intrinsic ones have been very valuable to me.
Research has shown us time and time again that intrinsic drivers draw out the best in people. Without it our resilience to stress and ability to perform is greatly limited. The difference between people who are propelled by extrinsic drivers and those who are not can be explained by their level of intrinsic motivation. When someone has a “full tank” of intrinsic motivation towards a task, however, their performance can be improved by extrinsic drivers. It is when our intrinsic motivation is limited and can not withstand the level of extrinsic pressure that our performance and well-being start to crumble.
There are several ways to manipulate the balance in your favour. The aforementioned strategy of prioritising the experience rather than the outcome is an excellent way to do this. So is learning to stack your intrinsic drivers. Think deeply about the reasons why you want to do this task, for example. Come up with as many intrinsic drivers as you can, you may even have external drivers that you can convert into intrinsic ones.
We are often taught and told that when the pressure and struggle get too difficult to handle you must push on to get to where you want to be. However, I see two faults in this kind of thinking. Firstly, we are attaching our happiness to these goals, something we can only have once we push through and “make it”. This strips us of the right to enjoy the process for what it is and limits our happiness throughout the journey. My second problem is that we are not even told how to push through. How much more struggle and self-doubt can you withstand just because someone told you to do more? In these moments of self-doubt and nervousness, how can you prevent yourself from feeling overwhelmed, incapable, and eventually give up or sacrifice your principles and cheat?
This is where I come to my last learning point, learning to not attach negativity to these doubts, in fact, they are a good sign. Freeride skiing world champion, Lorraine Huber, explained that she experiences these doubts and gets nervous during her competitions and that it’s not a cause of stress for her. They are merely a sign that what you are doing is challenging, it's going to be hard, and it is your body’s reaction to preparing you for it.
Hazel Findlay, one of the best rock climbers in the world, when asked about this matter said; “ask yourself what your life would be without hard challenges? Would you want that? Would it be fun?”. This was profound to me because in my competitive nature comes the drive for a challenge, and yet when I have doubts, I am not confident about I get stressed out and think about giving up.
The challenges which make you nervous and doubt your ability, are the worthwhile ones.
It is how you process these feelings and attach negativity to them which yield the negative effects, not the feelings themselves. After all, our brain is designed to think all of the time, so it is almost a guarantee you will have these thoughts. They don’t have to mean anything. It's easy to associate those feelings with negativity or avoidant thoughts but understanding them from a new perspective may improve your well-being and performance.
Conclusion
As humans, it has always been incredibly hard to strike the balance of things. We seek comfort even when it is not beneficial and fear discomfort when it can make us feel great; We can become easily obsessed over outcomes and forget about why we are seeking them out in the first place. We know too much of anything good is bad and this is all because we need the duality in things in order to appreciate the good. Without struggling, learning, or stretching our limits, having comfort and stability would not be enjoyable.
I have come to realise that flow is the moment where you are in perfect balance of optimal well-being and peak performance, two things which are necessary in leading a fulfilling life. I learned that striking this balance will always be a struggle and that the moments where we manage to achieve this are fleeting. Although, flow is fleeting, you can still live a life striving for flow or in the flow channel which is what I endeavour to do—and be happy with myself for it.
I have learned a lot from studying the experience of others and the science of flow but now it is time to embody it all through personal experience. I feel that I have a remarkable amount of information on flow after the Flow Diploma; more than I ever did before. I am now ready to just do, no excuses. On top of my goal to strive for balance and accept the eternal struggle of this challenge, is to think less, and be more.
[CN1]you learnt because fo the course or because of your changed perspective?? Help the reader undertaadn what you mean here, and swhy its important (i.e., so what?)
