Flow State

Flow state, the zone, wu wei, or any time in your life where you have felt completely free of thoughts besides thoughts about the task at hand.

This flow state is something humans have experienced and recognized for many years. It is within each and every one of us.

Some high-performing humans seem to experience this flow state a little more often. Artists, athletes, and writers are among some of the humans who seem to achieve this flow state often to create the results they desire.

However, some of us don’t really know how to harness the power of this heightened state of alertness.

Many people have spent their life researching this idea of flow state, namely Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as “the state of being completely involved in an activity for its own sake”.

He was so intrigued by the idea of flow state that he wrote many novels on the topic and spent most of his life researching how humans can achieve and use this state of flow to create great work.

Achieving flow state

Risk & challenge

The question many researchers have sought out, doesn't seem to have just one clear answer. There is more nuance to achieving flow state, as this state is not something that we can very specifically see and define, it shows up differently in each human. It seems that achieving flow most often occurs when we are participating in an activity that involves the perfect balance of risk and challenge.

For example, if someone who had never touched a camera before decided to learn with the most complicated and technical camera they could find, they might experience so much frustration that they never even pick up that camera again. Thus, they may never pick up photography and start to learn the craft.

Yet, if someone who was new to photography decided to watch a few youtube videos about the basics of photography and started to learn the settings on their iPhone camera, they might actually achieve some sort of flow with photography. This would be the perfect amount of risk (deciding to learn photography) and challenge (learning something new about the basic settings of the iPhone camera).

Meditative state

Some people may learn to enter the flow state through entering a sort of meditative state. They may create a certain ritual each time they want to participate in focused work.

This person conditions their brain by creating pattern recognition to ensure that they complete focused work after participating in their ritual. Some may perform a mindfulness activity, some just simply perform the act at the same time everyday and some turn to a substance.

One example of this that comes to my mind is the ritual Steven Pressfield describes in his masterpiece The War of Art. He explains that everytime he is going to write he starts his session by saying a prayer to the muses. Pressfield, whether he knows it or not, is creating a pattern in his brain to begin writing after saying this prayer to his muses.

Neuroscience

As research on this topic develops, there seems to be evidence evolving around what is going on in our brain when we enter a flowstate.

Some researchers attribute an increase in dopamine to an entrance into a flowstate. However, dopamine from sources such as our phone, can quickly take us out of a flow state.

Knowing that dopamine is a key factor to initiating that flow state feeling, we can use a few hacks to help us enter it.

• Cold showers

• Exercise

• Getting enough sleep

• Spending time in nature/ in the sun

• Meditation

• Eating healthy food

• Avoiding “quick dopamine hits” through your phone and processed food.

Interestingly enough, researchers also found that while our brains are in this flow state, we are actually experiencing a decrease in brain activity. Some believe that this is why we are able to make quicker and better decisions in a flow state. Our brain is allowing us to solely focus on the task at hand, rather than thinking about non-essential thoughts.

Benefits of the flow state

Flow state > Burn out

It is no surprise that we live in a hustle culture today. People idealize the person who grinds all the time to ensure that they achieve their goals. However, another rising topic recently has been the idea of burn out.

You may be wondering how this relates to flow ?... but trust me on this.

We set goals every new year, every month, and we take these ideas from the culture around us.

• Have a six pack

• Make a million dollars

• Wake up at 5am everyday

• Etc. etc.

I could go on and on about all the goals we idealize as a society. We then push ourselves beyond our limits to achieve these goals. We lose sleep, we lose time with our loved ones, and we take drastic measures to participate in hustle culture. Eventually this leads to a massive burnout and a drop in progress.

This whole time we didn’t think about how we can use the nature of our brain and body to ensure the best outcomes.

Taoism speaks a lot to flow and how we as humans can use this natural rhythm of flow to our advantage.

Just think of water and how water just flows, allowing it to be one of the most powerful forces in nature, without it even trying. Which then holds true for most forces in nature. There is not much effort, there is just a constant state of flow, which yields great results.

Or

These both describe how sometimes when we put forth so much effort, we don’t get the results we desire. Then the times that we just put in a consistent amount of natural effort daily we end up getting the results we desire and more.

So, maybe all of us putting in so much unnatural effort and pushing ourselves beyond our limits day in and day out, may not be the way. Maybe learning how to work with our brain, utilizing natural sources of dopamine and doing our best to work in a flow state will harbor much better results.

So should we always just live in the flow state?

It is no surprise that we will struggle to enter the flow state some days, just because that is human nature. So this is where the balance between effort and flow lies.

I am not a 100% believer in just living in the flow state all the time, because unfortunately the modern human world does not exist this way. Sometimes there are deadlines and things we need to do when we are not feeling our best.

Creating habits and enforcing discipline can often give us great results. If we used discipline in conjunction with flow, imagine how great our lives would be ?

Be willing to challenge yourself, but not to the point that you would lose your ability to enter flow state. Be willing to go with the flow enough, but not to the point that you do nothing and achieve nothing.

Humans will never be like water, because we have a brain. We can try our best but our ego will always get in the way. We think and make decisions in an effort to control our life and sometimes it feels like we don’t think at all and get nothing done. Maybe that’s a part of our natural human ebb and flow.

Maybe some people will achieve great results being completely in the flow all the time and maybe some will never enter or try to enter a flow state and achieve great results.

The only thing we can try and do is live our life in balance of both, to see if maybe we can live the life that we desire.

xoxo

Ailish

Have a great week :)