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January 1 - January 2, 2020
In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof.
The great civil rights leader Howard Thurman once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive.”
But for me, when it finally snaps together, when I’m really pushing the edge and skating beyond my abilities, there’s a zone I get into. Everything goes silent. Time slows down. My peripheral vision fades away. It’s the most peaceful state of mind I’ve ever known. I’ll take all the failures. As long as I know that feeling is coming, that’s enough to keep going.”
“Most people live in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.”
was clear from talking to them, that what kept them motivated was the quality of the experience they felt when they were involved with the activity. The feeling didn’t come when they were relaxing, when they were taking drugs or alcohol, or when they were consuming the expensive privileges of wealth. Rather, it often involved painful, risky, difficult activities that stretched the person’s capacity and involved an element of novelty and discovery.
“Imagination,” says futurist and philosopher Jason Silva, “allows us to conceive of delightful future possibilities, pick the most amazing one, and pull the present forward to meet it.”
“[T]he true challenge is how you continue doing it, after you’ve ridden the biggest wave, crossed the longest distance. You set up challenges that are more than what you ever did before. And by getting through it, you get the sensation you’ve completed something. And if it’s dangerous, then other things that scare you, the experience will strengthen you for those situations.”
“Right before I have to make a move, the Voice tells me what to do. And it’s never wrong. When the Voice tells you to do something, you do it: right then, don’t think, no questions asked. Not listening to the Voice is what’ll get you killed. I learned that really early in my climbing career.”
the term is actually one of the greatest misnomers in sport. Of the hundreds of athletes interviewed for this book, very few enjoy this rush. Most share professional kayaker Tao Berman’s sentiment: “I’m the farthest thing from an adrenaline junky. I can’t stand that feeling. If I’m feeling adrenaline, it means I’m feeling too much fear. It means I haven’t done my homework. It means it’s time to get out of my boat to reassess.”
While presents avoid work…futures consider work a source of special pleasure. For them, tomorrow’s anticipated gains and losses fuel today’s decisions and actions. Gratification delayed for greater reward is always a better bet for futures, who will trade a bird in the hand for a flock in the future. Unlike their present-hedonistic peers who live in their bodies, the futures live in their minds, envisioning other selves, scenarios, rewards and successes. The success of Western civilization in the past centuries can be traced to the prevalence of the future orientation of many populations.
“Because flow involves meeting challenges and developing skills,” explains Csikszentmihalyi in Good Business, “it leads to growth. It is an escape forward from current reality, whereas stimulants like drugs lead backward.”
Because norepinephrine and dopamine feel really good, playing with this trigger often produces long-lasting effects: risk takers are transformed into risk seekers.
“paradox of control,” another of flow’s defining characteristics. The paradox is real power in places we should have none.
“[W]e tend to exist in a distracted present, where forces on the periphery are magnified and those immediately before us are ignored. Our ability to plan—much less follow through on it—is undermined by our need to be able to improvise our way through any number of external impacts that stand to derail us at any moment. Instead of finding a stable foothold in the here and now, we end up reacting to an ever-present assault of simultaneous impulses and commands.”
Not only is the distracted present a miserable place to be, it’s also the worst kind of self-handicapping. Study after study shows that we’re terrible multitaskers.
Applying this idea in our daily life means breaking tasks into bite-size chunks and setting goals accordingly. A writer, for example, is better off trying to pen three great paragraphs at a time—the equivalent of moving through Mandy-Rae’s kick cycles—rather than attempting one great chapter. Think challenging, yet manageable—just enough stimulation to shortcut attention into the now, not enough stress to pull you back out again.
“It’s not how good you are; it’s how good you want to be.”
And certainly, lateralization isn’t the only way to shift paradigms, but on the flow path, it’s often the only way forward. Sooner or later, there’s always a Jaws: a mental hurdle we can’t clear, a decision too dangerous to attack head on. In those situations, sideways is forward.
The greatest athletes aren’t interested in the greatest risks. I mean, sometimes they’re taken, sometimes not, but those physical risks are a by-product of a much deeper desire to take creative risks. Don’t be fooled by the danger. In action and adventure sports, creativity is always the point.”
And these types of decisions are not too unusual on this path. All or nothing tends to be the kind of commitment flow demands—and it demands it of everyone. If you embark down this road, the requisite risk taking will continuously back you into uncomfortable corners. It’s almost ironic.
“Bliss junkies are people who think the magical ease of the flow state is the goal,” says Wheal. “When they confront the difficulty of the day to day, they’d rather reach for a pill or a new lover or another meditation retreat than get down to hard work. The idea being, if it was all so easy, clear, and effortless in flow, then why not wait for the next wave to hit? Not being in flow becomes an excuse to stay listless and undermotivated.”
Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, warned that a left-hand path is best never begun, and once begun, must absolutely be finished.
What does impossible feel like, sound like, look like. And then we start to be able to see ourselves doing the impossible—that’s the secret. There is an extremely tight link between our visual system and our physiology: once we can actually see ourselves doing the impossible, our chances of pulling it off increase significantly.”
“The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.”
