lohaits.blogg.se - Changing state flowstate

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Olympic athletes are a great example of this: sprinters look like they’re barely expending effort to get ahead of one another, despite the fact that they’re challenging their physical abilities at the highest level.Watching someone in a state of flow makes the difficult thing look easy: the performer looks like an effortless natural, despite the task being something of a challenge for them. They lose track of time or their surroundings. There’s actually little emotional content other than a feeling of ecstasy that serves as motivation. When people get into this state, they usually describe the emotions they’re feeling as spontaneous rapture. It can’t be too much of a challenge though, or you’ll probably get anxious–if the task is too far outside your ability, you’ll find yourself reflecting on what’s going on in a negative way instead of keeping up with the challenge as it occurs.Flow occurs when you don’t have to think about the basics, but the task at hand is a challenge for you, so you are constantly engaged in performing the skills you’ve mastered to achieve a new level of success. In other words, once you’ve mastered something, if you only perform it at that level, you’ll get bored. Lastly, once the first two steps have been achieved, a flow state usually requires the task at hand to be just outside your abilities. Flow is, in essence, a highly concentrated state, relaxed yet intensely focused. Next, it requires high levels of calm and focus. To get into a flow state, you have to have mastered the basics of what you’re trying to do.

Flow state is the ability to be totally in a moment and an action, without any removed opinions, good or bad.įirst, it requires long-term discipline. Anxiety is the tendency to step out of the current moment and look down on it from above with worry. Even reflecting on what we’re doing can take us out of a flow state–it halts the relationship between thinking and doing for a moment of outside reflection like “This is going well!” In this flow state, our awareness merges with our actions–there’s little to no gap between what we’re conscious of and what we’re doing.

Like a composer channeling her emotions into a piece of music where what she’s feeling seems to translate immediately into music and build on itself, and the more she writes, the easier it comes, all her skills working together in perfect harmony (Shortform note: pun intended).

This flow state represents the pinnacle of emotional control in the service of doing something–people who get into a flow state are not just controlling and directing their emotions, but their emotions become positive sources of energy that align with the goal they’re trying to achieve. One composer described it as his hand working without him–that the music just came pouring out by itself.

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They describe this state as one where you lose your sense of self–you might as well not exist, or you go into full autopilot–and your ability to do something seems to come from outside your mind or body. Flow state is a product of motivation, discipline, and practice. The most successful people in their fields–masters of a certain subject or ability–often describe their ideal working mentality as a “flow” state.

What is the mythical flow state? How do you achieve flow? How do you get into flow, and experience it?

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Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman.