Journey Frontiers album
Journey’s Frontiers album plays as I lie on my bed upstairs in my corner bedroom. It’s the summer before my freshman year in high school and I recently experienced my first real kiss. As Steve Perry sings “Send Her My Love”, my mind recreates the scene at Lumberjack Park inside the small Plymouth Horizon.
We’re in the front seat while my friend is in the back with her current love interest. Brent puts his hand on my leg as we talk. He smells like Off! bug spray, which I find surprisingly appealing. He leans in and kisses me with soft lips and just enough tongue. He tastes like Mountain Dew…
Then, suddenly, my sister is in my room yelling something about taking her sweater. She rummages through my closet, grabs what she wants and leaves.
Reverie smashed.
Flow states make life worth living
I’m taking a six-week online workshop on the flow state. I’ve had a fascination with the delicious dreamy creative state of being since I was a child. I believe the steady presence of flow experiences in my life is the reason for my overall contentedness and satisfaction. Jamie Wheal of The Flow Genome Project, says flow is the source code for intrinsic motivation. In my opinion, intrinsic motivation and curiosity keep life engaging and interesting and therefore fulfilling.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Mee-high Chick-sent-me-high-ee) is known as the father of flow theory. Noting that levels of happiness did not increase with increased personal income, he set out to find out what does bring happiness and satisfaction. Interviewing creative individuals like scientists and artists, he found many of them frequently experienced feelings of losing themselves, timelessness, effortlessness and ecstasy. During those periods they felt they were outside of everyday experiences. Time and movement felt fluid. Certain activities brought about a sense of flow.
Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, description of flow
Do introverts experience flow differently due to stimulation sensitivity?
Flow states, like Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences, do not happen continuously. Behind the flow feeling is a cascade of brain chemicals produced by the right mix of challenge and skill in our activities. There is a cycle to flow which requires us to go through different phases such as struggle and recovery. We all have different triggers that prompt us to enter the flow cycle.
Now as a 40something trying to work from home, the potential for interruptions is the same. My phone, my children and my own distracted mind pull me away from the contemplative scene necessary for full creative productivity. Writing is the perfect blend of challenge and skill for me. If left alone in stillness I can create sentences I’m proud of. I can slip into the beautiful place where my inner critic is silent and ideas flow.
flow is addictive, once we find it.
i read ‘Flow’ when it first came out. I understood it, because I have known it for a long time. mostly, it happens when I write. when I put keys on the keyboard, it’s like a ‘turn on’ switch. and words and images and ideas flow, and the more i write, the more comes to me.
I have long believed that ideas / thoughts / emotions are entities, life forms, beings, of their own. and the more we entertain them — through writing, in my case — the more they come to us. and they come in floods. wanting to be let out, really, into the light of this world. when they realize we are open conduits for them, more and more come to us. it is a staggering and sacred thing.
if we want to create, then really we need only truly entertain the thoughts and ideas as they come to us, love them, tell them that we love them, play with them, hear them, speak for them, let them guide us. and they come in a flood. it is a beautiful thing.
we seek the addictive pleasures. creating is one of those for me. sex is a beautiful pleasure, too, a connection, a blending, a becoming one, with another. life itself is a beautiful pleasure, when we see with our hearts, as well as our eyes. beauty surrounds us. i think that when we see with our hearts, then we have a vision that far surpasses what our eyes see. we see people, life itself, ourselves, everything, differently. it’s like a parallel universe, if that’s even the right description. we swim in the infinite. our five senses detect only a fraction of it all.
flow can be a fairly constant state, or as often as we want, when we find the things that are our passions. writing. photography. creating. walking under blue skies. walking in the rain. getting soaked. making love. having a hot dog at a ball game. seeing a couple in love, or being in love. my gosh, all of that is a flow, because we forget ourselves (well, not exactly, but we’re not into our ego at those times). watching a child laugh. laughing like a child (living from our child self). how beautiful it all is.
Brenda, thank you for a wonderful note about all this. you touched on some wonderful things. and … you gave the phonetic pronunciation of his name! that was amazing itself! you had to be in a flow state when you did that!!
Michael
From my perhaps skewed remembrance, I feel like I had flow a lot of the time as a child. I wrote stories all the time and felt more creative than I have ever since. In my adult life, it would happen at my first real job. I was also an office manager, as well as a many-hat-wearer/juggler of anything that needed to be done. I’d find flow on the days that everything just sailed, I was able to keep consistently busy but not stressfully so, and was able to stay concentrated on each task that I was working on. It was hard to find those moments because I was in an open-plan, incredibly distracting office with a ringing phone, several people talking and/or laughing, a dog barking, etc. When I could get it among all of the ruckus it was even more satisfying though, but also more exhausting. It’s a great feeling, one I’d like to get back.
Your office manager job sounds just like mine! Exactly! When you were a child writing stories were you alone in a quiet space? Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope you find more flow moments. They are so rich and satisfying.:)