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Living at the peak of your abilities, means a life lived in Flow. Here, life coach Jeanne Beukes shares the principles of Flow and how they can help you live life more consciously…

Most people associate happiness with lots of money, a comfortable house, a new car, a promotion or the right relationship.  But do these things really bring happiness? Or are they possibly just fleeting enjoyments on the path to our true destination –happiness?  Here is where it is important to highlight the difference between pleasure and enjoyment. Pleasures derived from external influences, or materialistic gains, certainly make us feel better in the moment, but they don’t help us grow and, unless controlled, can actually become addictive. As humans we always want more – more comfort, more things, more pleasure and, unless we learn to enjoy the moment and the passage of time as it occurs instead of always wishing for more, we are going to be disillusioned and disappointed.

When we are able to experience happiness from everyday activities (relishing the moment, enjoying our interaction with our environment, people and daily tasks) we are living in Flow and finding happiness from living, rather than from external desires.

WHAT IS FLOW?
According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow means living at the peak of your abilities and was termed by him as the “Psychology of Optimal Experience.” We have all experienced Flow at some point or another in our lives: that feeling when we were so engrossed in an activity or experience that we lost our sense of time and what was going on around us, feeling only the joy of the experience. Some people refer to this as being ‘in the zone’ – i.e. having complete involvement in what you are doing.

HOW FLOW CAME ABOUT:
As a young boy in Eastern Europe post World War 2, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi saw many adults devastated by the effects of war. Yet there were others who were able to keep their sanity as well as sense of joy and even succeeded in helping others during this difficult time. Curious to how they managed this, Csikszentimihalyi started what was to become a 30-year study on the source of happiness and meaning in the lives of others.

Later as a university professor with the help of his students, he introduced the ESM or Experience Sampling Method, a method of interviewing where people from and all walks of life were given electronic pagers and answer booklets and approximately 10 times per day when the beeper went off, they were asked to stop, document and answer questions on what they feeling in relation to the activity.   The findings today constitute what is now called a Flow experience.

THE NINE COMPONENTS OF FLOW:

Clarity:
In every situation, there are contradictory demands, and it’s sometimes quite unclear what should occupy your attention. But in a Flow experience, you have a clear purpose and a good grasp of what to do next. You are clear on the overall goal as well as the step-by-step process to follow of where you are going and what you are doing.

Feedback:
Feedback is immediate; you know moment by moment how the activity is going and how well you are doing. Clear feedback allows you to make adjustments to affect the outcome. If you don’t know how you are doing, it’s hard to keep concentrating. For example, a surgeon conducting an operation knows at any particular moment how well he is doing by how much blood is entering the wound.

Support and challenge:
The challenge of the activity is matched with your abilities and skills set. There is a balance. If the task is too demanding for your abilities, it will be stressful and frustrating; if too easy, you will be bored. The match of skills and challenge needs to be interesting to create enjoyment. In a Flow experience you feel engaged by the challenge, not overwhelmed.

Focused Awareness:
Awareness is where your focus and concentration is, and on what you are doing. A lot of our time we operate with split attention, doing something while thinking about something else. In a Flow experience, you can achieve so much more, because you are present and your focus is not divided. When you are absorbed in the activity, you don’t think about unrelated things and are not distracted by what’s going on around you. By being focused on the activity, unease that can cause anxiety and depression is set aside. You feel good about your ability to be completed singly focused and this creates a feeling of inner harmony. A great ease and spontaneous energy comes from concentration.

Free from worry:
Learning new skills and having new challenges is a relief from day to day restraints. In a state of Flow, you’re too involved to be concerned about failing, you just don’t think about failure. You know what has to be done and you just do it. Flow can be a form of escape, but in a productive way, not by suppressing or dulling reality.

Control:
You feel in control, but there is an edge to the experience i.e. there is a balance between conscious control and being on autopilot.

Free from self-consciousness:
In a Flow experience you are so involved, concentrated and committed to what you are doing that you are no longer aware or care what others think.  You lose self-consciousness – the ego defense of everyday life.  Some of the worst feelings we experience are from worrying what other people think of us.  This drains our energy.
In Flow you feel a sense of transcendence, of going beyond the limits of the ego and yourself.  You feel part of the energy flowing around you and being connected to something greater than yourself.  Paradoxically, the experience of letting go of the self is what strengthens it.

Time:
In Flow your sense of time is transformed. It adapts itself to your experience, to how you feel. Time flies when you are really engaged – hours become minutes… or minutes become hours, or so it seems.

The activity becomes ‘autotelic’ :
The activity is an end in itself, done for its own sake, for the enjoyment the experience provides, not for some future purpose or anticipated outcome.

HOW FLOW CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE:
Flow is a magnet for growth, pulling you to higher levels of complexity or advancement. It helps you master your consciousness and gain control over your inner life: your attention, moods, and willpower. This helps you achieve the second goal – to gain control over your external life regardless of external conditions.

Flow grows our self-esteem. When Flow has occurred, you are able to reflect on how you felt from doing something new, learning a new skill and being challenged. The feeling is always a good one. Self-esteem and inner strength increases as a result of feeling good about yourself and letting yourself go.

If we can live consciously, then we can live remarkably. We spend approximately 1/3 of our time working, 1/3 as free time and 1/3 on maintenance activities for our lives and ourselves. This maintenance time – shopping, driving, cooking, eating, cleaning etc can be perceived as wasted if spent unconsciously.

If you learn to enjoy these, and do them to the best of your ability, with efficiency and elegance, so you experience a sense of control over even the smallest activities.  Instead of the activities ‘doing you,’ you will get an extra lift knowing you are not wasting your time, but doing your best. Living a life in Flow is about consciously building goals into daily chores, even making a game of them.  By doing this, our attention is framed and we are able to be present in the moment.

Enjoying day-to-day experiences as part of a meaningful life fills you with serenity and satisfaction, which is a giant stride towards happiness.

When we consciously look for opportunities to create Flow experiences, we become involved in the endlessly rich opportunities for action the world around us presents.

By Jeanne Beukes
(Meta NLP Certified Life Coach; Member of Comensa)
Email: jeanne@flowcoaching.co.za or visit www.flowcoaching.co.za for more information