FLOURISH - Finding Flow

Learn two suggestions for getting into the flow state. 

In the previous episode we suggested that the state of flow could be a good measure of qualty-of-life. The more time we spend in the flow, the greater our quality of life. So, how can we find more flow in our lives? 

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, the father of flow, found that the flow state arises when there is a dynamic interplay between challenge and resources (skill).  We need to challenge ourselves and we need to develop the skills and resources needed to meet those challenges. 

Steven Kotler, who studies peak performance in the flow state, has found that finding flow is a process that has four stages. Two stages, struggle and release, come before the actual flow state. And one stage, the involves recovery and renewal, comes after the flow state. 

Transcript

FINDING FLOW

I’m Michael C. Patterson. Welcome to the FLOURISH AS YOU AGE series in which I’m exploring mental strategies that will help me -US - to flourish as I grow old.

The premise of this series is that the quality of our old age will be determined by the quality of our mental states. Our quality-of-life, in other words, is largely determined by how we interpret the experience of aging. 

In the previous episode I introduced the idea of flow and suggested that flow might be a useful measure for quality-of-life. The more time we spend in a state of flow, the richer our quality of life. So let’s go a little deeper into exploring what flow is and how can we make it happen more often?

Psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi did the first deep exploration of “flow” in his 1990 book of the same name. He might reasonably be called the “Father of Flow,” and is a pioneer in the field of positive psychology. He is also the American psychologist with the hardest name to spell. Csikszentmihalyi, pronounced (Chick-sent-mi-hi), I think.  Csikszentmihalyi was pioneer of positive psychology and has done more than anyone to make us aware of the state of flow.  

Csikszentmihalyi’s interest in using the mind to cultivate happiness may have originated as a reaction to the significant pain and suffering he experienced as a young child. Mihalyi was forced to cope with a lot of death and grief at too early an age. 

In the Middle of World War II, ten-year-old Mihalyi was locked away in an Italian prison camp. One older brother died in combat, the other was sent to a forced labor camp in Siberia. Many of Mihalyi’s friends and relatives were killed during the conflict. 

Csikszentmihalyi claims that the game of chess enabled him to survive the prison camps.

“I discovered chess was a miraculous way of entering into a different world where all those things didn’t matter. For hours I’d just focus within a reality that had clear rules and goals. If you knew what to do, you could survive there.” 

The young Mihalyi shifted his conscious attention away from the horrors of war and sequestered himself within safer mental territory. He found a way to enter a reality that was structured and orderly, yet fluid and creative. 

It was a world of play, that held the opportunity for flow. Playing the game of chess was so engaging that – for a time at least – Mihalyi could find respite from the fear, anguish, grief and anger that was his daily reality. 

So, flow takes us to “a different world,” as Csikszentmihalyi, described it. It is an altered state of consciousness. A different reality, or perhaps more accurately a different way of perceiving reality. It was a way of perceiving reality that clarified ones goals and the rules one needs to follow to attain them. 

For the young Csikszentmihalyi, the state of flow was an escape mechanism that protected his psyche from the despair and disillusionment brought on by the horrors of war. Later in life, as a professor of psychology, Csikszentmihalyi found that the state of flow could also serve to elevate people’s moods. The mental state of flow gives us a taste of what it feels like to flourish, to feel – if only briefly - a profound sense of happiness, comfort and fulfillment. 

The chess example offers some additional hints into the nature of flow. First, Csikszentmihalyi found the flow state in a particular activity - playing chess. Activity is the operative word, here. Action is taken to achieve a certain goal or task. In flow, our mind is focused exclusively on that task. It isn’t day-dreaming, it isn’t multi-tasking, it’s not meandering hither and yon after whatever new thoughts come to mind. 

The second useful insight from Csikszentmihalyi goes beyond the activity itself and speaks to the way we engage with an activity. Chess was a form of play.  Play is an attitude. When we say we are playing we are saying that we are having fun, we are enjoying what we are doing. There may be rules and restrictions and there’s competition, but they just add to the challenge and the fun. 

There’s a little bit of stress. When we play, we feel challenged and stimulated, but not to the point of being stressed out. This brings us to an important insight that Csikszentmihalyi had about the nature of flow. He says that flow is a dynamic interplay of challenge and skill. To enter a flow state we need to feel challenged - a little bit of stress. And, we need our best performance to meet the challenge. We might even need to push ourselves to new levels of performance, to our new personal best.  

But, the challenge cannot be so great as to feel impossible. It needs to be attainable. We need to be able to visualize ourselves successfully performing the activity. We have to have the skills needed to complete the task. We need the resources required by the activity. 

Steven Kotler, director of the Flow Genome Project, has studied super athletes who operate at peak performance and often push the limits of what we think is humanly possible. Kotler believes that these people are able to achieve what he calls “ultimate human performance” when they enter a state of flow. Kotler’s insights about flow are useful, even if we have no intention or hope of becoming a super athlete. 

According to Kotler, flow should not be mistaken for a perpetual state of mind. It is transitory. Further, he says that flow cannot be turned on and turned off like a spigot. Flow doesn’t arise out of the blue, out of a vacuum. We need to set the stage for flow to take place. It takes work and persistence to activate flow because it unfolds, Kotler suggests, across four predictable stages.  

Kotler describes flow as a cycle that consists of the following four stages. They are: 

1) Struggle, 

2) Release, 

3) Flow, and 

4) Recovery. 

Kotler notes that three of the four stages of flow don’t even feel particularly “flowy.” Only stage three, the actual state of flow has that sense of ease and inevitability. The non-flowy stages, Struggle, Release and then Recovery, often feel more like work, or perhaps effortful play. 

Three of the four stages of flow are devoted to developing the required skills, learning, practicing, rehearsing, repeating and learning from failures. They are also involved with learning how accept challenge, how to push ourselves beyond our comfort zones, to push through challenges. And, coming out of the state of flow we often need to rest and renew our cognitive strength in preparation to enter into a new cycle of flow.

I’ll explore Kotler’s stages of flow in other podcast but for now I want to relate them to Csikszentmihalyi’s ratio of challenge and skill, or challenge and resources. Kotler’s insights are that we can increase access to the flow state, but it doesn’t just happen by itself. To increase our access to flow we need to get ourselves into the right frame of mind. 

We need to build and master the skills needed to meet the challenge of the task. We won’t be able to flow with the game of tennis until we learn how to consistently hit the ball. We can’t flow on the piano until we learn the basic scales. Reading books can’t give us access to flow until we learn how to read.

I’m intrigued that Kotler’s stages of flow share a lot of characteristics with my analysis of the creative process. I see creativity, echoing Kotler, not as a steady state of mind, but as a transitory altered state of mind that unfolds over stages. We are, for example, more likely to experience the Aha! Moment of insight if we have primed our mind with a clear goal, and saturated our mind with relevant information. More on this in another episode. 

So, to sum up: 

In the previous episode on flow we suggested that flow might serve as a good measure of QoL. The more flow, the more quality. So, how do we cultivate flow. There are two main strategies discussed in this episode. First, is Csickszentmihalyi’s idea that flow results from a dynamic interplay of challenge that slightly exceeds our level of skill and expertise. Second, we reviewed Steve Kotler’s idea that flow is a four stage process that includes a period of struggle and a period of release before we actually get into the flow state. And, Kotler suggests, that the flow state is inevitably followed by a needed period of rest and renewal. 

As you go about your day, think about the state of flow.  When do you get into a state of flow? What kinds of activities move you towards flow? 

Till next time. Be well. Have fun. Flow with the flow.