Good morning! As promised last week, today I am going to talk about flow. Not the water flow from your shower head (or lack thereof), but the scientific concept of flow that we all have access to, and can contribute to our well-being in simple but effective ways.
Have you ever been doing something you enjoy and suddenly realized time has passed so quickly without noticing it? Have you ever been so immersed in a task that you paid no attention to anything else that was happening around you? Have you ever felt like you were doing something (playing a game, a sport, a piece of music, etc.), and your body was so in tune with what you were doing, it was like you were on autopilot, and performing at your absolute best? Well, if you said yes to any of these questions, then you have probably experienced flow!
Flow is a psychological phenomena that was first coined and often studied by my academic mentor, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Yes, that is a long name. :) And his legacy in the world of Positive Psychology is equally as long. But back to flow. I first learned about flow when I read Dr. Csikszentmihalyi's book by the same name, and he and I later co-authored, with another writer and runner, Phil Latter, a book called "Running Flow." So, what is this flow?
Let me tell you!
Flow is an experience, but also a process. It begins when you choose to do something you enjoy, something you feel intrinsically motivated to do (which means, you do it just because you like doing it), and you set a goal. I am a trail runner, so my flow is most often experienced while out on a trail, and I have set a goal for either a distance, or time, or both. But flow can be found in many activities: a sport, creating or performing music, artistic creations like painting, sculpturing, or baking, video gaming, or even in your work (which is great if you can do it), like a scientist in a lab, a writer, a designer, a cook. Even sex can be a flow experience!
So, you set out to meet this goal, whatever the goal is that you want to accomplish. Setting the right goal is key to experiencing flow. If the goal is too easy, then you are more likely to experience relaxation or boredom than flow. If the goal is too hard, you are more likely to experience stress or anxiety than flow. Sometimes you need easy goals, to relax, and sometimes you need difficult goals to improve, so those are important, too. But for flow, the goal needs to be just slightly beyond your current skill level to encourage flow.
Next, you begin the activity and check your progress toward the goal. For me, that is my runner's watch telling me my pace, or the mile markers I have come to know along the trail, that tell me how far I have run. You use that data to determine your progress: am I on target to meet the goal, or do I need to adjust my performance (run faster, slower, worker harder, etc.)? Am I having a bad day and I need to adjust my goal? That might be more appropriate if you want to experience flow and you find you are struggling too much to meet the goal.
I have never found that, in checking my progress toward a running goal, that I had to 'slow down', but I have needed to make adjustments to my goal, or to increase my pace on many occasions. You might find that to be the case for yourself, too. Maybe, if your goal is to perform a musical piece perfectly, you might need to slow down a little bit at first.
What you will find in this process of checking your progress and analyzing your performance is that you start to block out the world, and lose track of time. Video gamers definitely know what that is like, as do runners. This is definitely an important part of the flow experience, and it is an indicator of changes taking place in brain functioning that are related to flow.
In previous running flow experiences, I have had people tell me they saw me on the trail, and waved but I didn't respond. It was not because I didn't want to respond to them, but because I was so embedded in a flow experience that I was oblivious to others around me.
Next in the flow process is what we call a merging of action and awareness, or a connection between the mind and body that results in a feeling of smooth responses that seem to happen without effort. Swimmers have said it is like their body was one with the water, and they were floating on top of the water, their body moving perfectly with little effort. Musicians have said it was like their fingers moved across their musical instrument like they were one with the instrument, and their was little thought required, it seemed.
Because of this merging of action and awareness, which again is the result of changes in brain activity, we tend to perform at our best in this moment. We are not thinking about other people or circumstances, because we have lost the feeling of self-consciousness and the passage of time, and our body or mind is responding in a way that is sort of magical. It isn't, but it definitely feels like it.
One thing to keep in mind is that flow is not guaranteed, and once you realize you are experiencing it, is tends to disappear. It is rather fleeting, you can set the stage for it, but if you are planning on having a flow experience, chances are you won't. So, the key is to just do what you love, set the stage by making a goal for your activity that suits a flow experience, and then just enjoy the activity. If flow comes, fabulous. If not, you still, hopefully, enjoyed yourself!
This reminds me of my own flow experiences when I was in graduate school. Writing about and researching flow was a real flow killer for me. Which was rough, because dealing with the stress of academia was, for me, all about trail running and flow. So, if studying flow robbed me of experiencing flow, which it did, that was a real bummer. But it just goes to show you that you cannot expect it to happen, you just do what you enjoy and then, maybe, it will happen!
The whole flow experience is on its own very intrinsically rewarding, meaning, it feels good and you want to experience it more. You enjoy the activity that provides you the flow experience, and you want to participate in the activity even more, because you like it AND because you get the flow benefits. So, what are the other benefits of flow? There are several!
Experiencing flow allows you to improve your skills in the activity itself, so that is one great and direct benefit. There are others, though! First, it moderates your stress response. In other words, if you are stressed, and you experience flow, you will likely feel less stressed. It also helps you generally perceive your stress as more manageable more globally, not just in the moment.
Flow helps you activate your creativity, so you can problem solve better. Whenever I feel stuck in my writing or research, I like to go out for a trail run to clear my head, get some flow, and find some answers. Try it. Flow also helps improve memory, and elevate mood. So, you see how helpful flow can be in the middle of a pandemic? It is a great prescription for pandemic resilience!
Your task today is to think about how you have or can experience flow. What is it you like to do, that brings you joy, that requires you to set a goal of some sort? Maybe you know right away what that thing is for you, but maybe you need to think about it. Do that. And then, find time to do that activity when you can. As regularly as you can.
I know this might not be easy, given our current situation. I have not been able to trail run in months, because I am in a 'high risk' category for COVID-19, and I don't want to run on single trek trails with other people who are not masking. So, I have had to come up with new ways to experience flow, or old ways that I didn't practice as much.
The benefits of taking time to consider flow activities, and then make them a priority in some way, are going to be important during the ongoing stress we are all experiencing right now. I often think that the times at which I most benefit from flow experiences are the times during which I feel less able to carve out the time for them. But, when I have made it happen, even for 20 minutes (which is typically the minimal amount of time to get into flow), I felt reaped the rewards of the flow experience. So, make time for it today.
Meanwhile, be well, stay safe, and take care.
Comments