You: You experience flow as a solitary journey. You tend to enter the Flow State by way of creative, reflective, even soothingly repetitive work. Your mind wanders, your nervous system relaxes deeply, and you channel inspiration without inhibition.You’re able to tolerate and even thrive in the daily hustle and bustle, but a part of you craves stillness. You crave time to return to your sanctuary for rejuvenation. You find yourself seeking out times of the day — early mornings, or late evenings — during which you can feel free from conflicts and demands and pursue the uninterrupted concentration you value most.
Flow Hacks: How you engage with Flow ranges widely and defies easy categorization. You may pursue classical arts, such as painting, pottery, or music. You may be drawn to more contemporary forms of expression like digital photography, gaming, coding. You’re a “maker.” You might seek gentle communion with nature. You might prefer hiking, gardening, birdwatching, or working with animals to more high-speed pursuits.
Caution: Your particular sensitivity to a modern “always on” society might make you deeply out of place. It’s important that you make the dedicated effort it may take in order for you to carve out time for those experiences that give you the restorative Flow you need. In an age as commercialized as ours, you may feel defensive about your pursuits. Remind yourself that writing poetry, for instance, is a perfectly worthwhile endeavor, even if you never seek publication. It’s okay to sculpt or to ride horses, even if you never “win” anything from doing so. Your passions are serving an essential purpose! They keep you balanced and energized. They increase your resilience, your immunity, your creativity, and your optimism. That’s more than enough reason to continue!
Pro-Tip: Given your relatively gentle nature and your rich inner life, you might feel like you’re less physically gifted than others. You might not have excelled in team sports, and you may shun the vigorous and challenging in favor of the contemplative and restorative. Your ability to cope with the fast pace of the world around you might be bolstered by cardio and strength training. You might sign up for a fun run. Test your boundaries mentally, build some muscle physically. You’ll find you’ll fast become more resilient in your day-to-day, and be rewarded with more valuable, focused experiences in the Flow State.
Studies have shown that flow can be found even more frequently when working with a group of people. Group flow amongst friends is not only common, but encouraged to take your flow state to new levels. Do you have friends who share a similar worldview? Have them take the Flow Profile, as well, so you can compare notes and better understand how to encourage one another into finding your peak performance in an expanding flow state.
Looking for more Flow? Flow Fundamentals is a 6-week self-paced online training program that gives you specific direction for finding more Flow in your life. Updated for 2019, Flow Fundamentals now includes over 30 new videos, a fully interactive app, wearables integration, automated calendar reminders and a social community!
If you'd like to dive deeper than Flow Fundamentals and explore one of our advanced courses, book a call with us here and we'll see where you're at and explore how we can help you.
