What Is Flowstate? With Jiro Taylor

“Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.” Lao Tsu. The flow state is beautifully simple, and it certainly does not need to be “hacked”. And it sure as hell is not just for extreme sports types. In this Flow Nugget I offer various ways to look at flow, explain why it is so integral to realising our full potential, and how we can all experience more flow in our daily lives. The flow state means many things to many people. Psychologists, neuroscientists, athletes, artists all have different ways of looking at flow.. and that is just in the western world. The east has its own ways of looking at flow.

Transcript

Welcome to the FlowState Performance Podcast,

Created for those committed to mastery and success.

Coming to you from Manly,

Australia,

We break down the science and philosophy of optimal performance,

So you can unleash your potential.

Welcome to Flow Nuggets.

I'm Jero Taylor,

The founder of FlowState Collective,

And today I just wanted to give the simplest introduction to flow.

What is flow?

What's it all about?

Why should you care?

So the flow that most people know through popular culture is this,

Is the athlete's flow,

Being in the zone or run as high,

Being dialed in,

And that's describing that sweet spot of heightened performance.

To the artist,

Flow feels like timeless immersion where nothing else exists.

To the psychologist,

Flow is a psychological state of optimal consciousness.

To the neuroscientist,

Flow is a neuroscientific mechanism which occurs when there's a temporary downregulation of parts of our brain,

Of parts of our prefrontal cortex.

So there's many,

Many different ways of looking at flow.

And then we start bringing in flow,

The philosophy of flow,

Or flow as described in Eastern traditions.

In Japan,

In the Zen tradition,

There's a term,

無心の心,

Which means mind of no mind.

And to me,

That pretty much describes the flow state.

And in Daoism,

There's a term,

無為,

Which translates as effortless action,

Or action through no doing.

The reason why I bring up all these different ways of looking at flow is because my feeling is that flow is a personal thing.

Yes,

We have these neuroscientists giving definitions,

Or these psychologists giving definitions,

And there's a dominant definition of flow in our culture,

Which is basically an optimal state of consciousness in which you feel your best and perform your best.

But for me,

I think it's personal.

When is it and what are you doing when you are feeling flowy?

The Western way of looking at flow,

I.

E.

That optimal state of consciousness where you have certain flow triggers that get you into a certain state of optimal consciousness,

It seems to be more about what you add to the situation.

It seems to be more about adding things,

Doing things a certain way.

Whereas the Eastern way of looking at it,

The Asian way,

The way described in the way a Kung Fu master or a samurai warrior would understand flow,

More is like effortless action or being in that state of mind of no mind.

This is more about letting things go,

Or minimalism,

Or detachment from outcome,

Or really not trying to do anything.

It's actually the state which arises from awareness and harmony.

So it's a very yin to the Western world yang way of looking at flow.

The key thing to remember for me is that flow is available to all of us.

It doesn't matter what school of thought that you subscribe to.

It doesn't matter whether you've got a very scientific way of looking at things or a very esoteric way of looking at things.

Flow is available to all of us.

And it doesn't matter whether you're a housewife or a house husband or whether you're a professional athlete.

You can achieve a state of flow.

It's a very personal thing to you.

And by doing the right things or by releasing the right things,

You can tune into this state.

And for me,

The profundity of flow is that this is really about unleashing or tapping into your highest potential as a human.

So what does a flow state feel like?

Well,

I can only talk about my own personal experience with flow.

And I'd invite you to have a good think about how your experience of flow feels like.

But for me,

I experience flow a lot when I'm writing.

I experience flow when I'm surfing,

Snowboarding,

Mountain biking,

In deep conversation with a friend.

In many situations,

Sometimes I could just be sitting in nature,

Hanging out with trees or whatever,

Or just sitting in the ocean by myself.

But when I feel flow,

I feel like there's something spontaneous and effortless going on.

My senses become heightened.

There's a funny thing that goes on with time.

It either slows down or it speeds up.

The most predominant or the most remarkable thing for me in all of my flow experiences is this diminishment of self or ego.

And this is one of the reasons why I seek the flow experience so much,

Because it's just bloody exhausting dealing with yourself and your ego the whole time.

And when we can be in these transcendent states of flow or meditation where we can just interact with the present moment rather than interfacing constantly with our ego,

Our self,

Our thoughts,

Our fearful thoughts,

To me,

It's the way I like to design my life,

Because it's just exhausting just dealing with yourself the whole time.

Another feature of flow is that your attention becomes laser focused.

You feel calm,

In control.

You make rapid and complex decisions because we're operating from a very rapid and efficient process system,

Which is our implicit system,

Our subconscious.

And we also become better at recognizing patterns.

We become more creative.

We become better problem solvers.

And if you were to be a neuroscientist and you were to look at what's actually going on in the brain when we're flowing,

There's like a cascade of neurochemicals that are being released.

There's neuroelectrical shifts that are going on in our brain.

There's a whole lot of things that go on in the brain that drive us into this state of flow.

So depending on who you talk to or depending on what your experience of flow is,

Words like flowy,

Sublime,

Euphoric,

Blissful,

Harmonious,

Powerful,

These could all be used to describe different flow experiences.

But I'd just like to reiterate,

This is an intensely personal thing.

So just have a think about what your flow state feels like.

By far the coolest thing about the modern scientific approach to looking at flow states is the way that they can apply certain metrics and they can apply high tech imaging technology to see what goes on in the brain and then they can also run these research projects which give us some tangible evidence for what flow states do.

I don't feel this evidence is necessary.

I think as long as you're feeling that sense of heightened awareness and immersion,

That's awesome.

But it might be interesting for you to know that studies have shown that we are five times more productive in flow and way more creative.

Some people say 300%,

Some people say 700% more creative in flow.

And we are much better learners.

We learn things faster and this is a fact that's been leveraged by elite military units and people who are trained to be pilots and snipers and all sorts of things.

They are using artificial methods to induce flow so that people can learn faster.

My own experience of flow states is that when I tune into flow,

It's like my authentic self is coming out.

It's like I begin to see the world with fresh eyes.

And when I'm in a flow state,

I feel like I'm operating an altered state of consciousness.

And I view this state of consciousness as something that's very useful.

It's a very interesting parallel to the dominant state of consciousness that we tend to operate in this world which is one of logic and reason and thought and analysis.

Flow is sort of the opposite to all of that.

And I think it's really useful for the human experience to experience both sides.

So I see flow as way more than a performance enhancer.

I really,

You know,

Performance.

So what if you can do quadruple backflips on a skateboard or whatever?

I mean,

That's awesome.

But I see flow as so much more than that.

I see it as a pathway to self-actualization.

I see it as a pathway to freedom and I see it as a way,

A language,

A philosophy that can direct our entire awareness inward.

It can really be a path to self-mastery.

That's what I see the flow state as.

So how can you experience more flow in your life?

Well,

I see it as a three-step process.

I see the base,

The foundation being awareness.

I feel like developing a level of awareness of who we are,

What drives us,

What our sense of meaning is in life and what is it that we like doing.

What does flow feel like for us?

I feel like developing awareness of all these things is really the foundation.

Because without self-awareness,

It's really like you're driving in the fog.

Like where are you actually going?

The second foundation or the second step I'd say is habits and rituals.

What is it that we're doing in our daily life?

How are we spending our lives?

I spoke before about samurai warriors and kung fu masters and people in the East.

I've got big respect for that sort of tradition because these people really had.

.

.

When I think about the East,

I think about rituals.

Rituals and discipline and really training,

Dedication to training.

That's what that part of the world embodies for me.

So I think habits.

What are your habits?

The third step is really about mastery and fine-tuning.

This is where we start talking about developing your intuition or developing your sixth sense and really developing a very fine-tuned level of awareness so you can start really designing your life around flow.

In terms of what you can do right now to add more flow into your life,

The way I break it down is very simple.

I feel like there's internal things and there's external things.

So let's look at the internal factors.

I break these down into two.

We've got our mind and we've got our body.

So what can we do?

How can we train our mind to experience more flow states?

Well,

You can increase your focus and attention and concentration.

You can do that a whole number of ways,

Either reading,

I don't know,

Doing sudoku or puzzles.

Meditation is a very powerful technique.

You could do visualization.

I think also identifying your comfort zone and then deciding where and how you can push your own limits.

Reframing reality – I've got a friend,

Pete Longworth,

Who once said to me,

Learn to see the splendor in the mundane.

I thought that was amazing.

Just this idea of you can come home from work.

I think this is the example he gave.

You can come home from work and you can be in a shitty mood and all you see is mess.

All you see is the shit stuff,

The stuff that's going to block your flow.

Or you can come home from work and you can just see opportunity.

You can turn your mind to play.

You can see the splendor in the mundane and you can turn anything into an opportunity for flow.

So those are a few things that you can do with your mind.

For your body,

I think nourishing your body,

Having like a real – putting your attention on what you feed your body.

I think developing body awareness through a practice,

Whether it's martial arts,

Tai Chi,

Dancing,

Yoga,

Sports.

I think that's a super powerful way to develop propensity for flow states.

Breathing exercises,

Pranayama from the yoga tradition or free diving breathing techniques or actually just breathing,

Just being aware of your breath I think is super powerful.

The more you're aware of your breath,

The more you're in the moment.

The more you're in the moment,

The more you're going to experience flow states.

So that's a quick overview of internal mechanisms,

Mind and body.

Secondly,

I'd look at the environment.

These are external things,

So environment and habits.

So high consequence environments,

Take yourselves out there.

Oceans,

Rivers,

Mountains,

Jungles,

Urban jungles too.

But anywhere that's complex and different and is going to keep you on your toes is going to be an environment that's going to put you in flow states more.

Participate in group events with shared goals to experience collective flow.

Join a team,

Join a drumming circle,

Go to five rhythms dancing,

Go to something where you do something as a group and notice that sense of resonance when you tune in with other people in a group.

Observe group flow in nature.

Observe nature,

Observe dolphins,

Observe flocks of birds,

Observe schools of fish,

Look how they are.

Observe an orchestra,

Observe elite teams.

Just observe how people operate when they're working in flow.

In terms of habits,

There's so much you can do to experience more flow states.

You can create clear goals in a feedback loop.

That's like number one foundation.

Goals and feedback loop is very foundational for flow.

You can gamify your life.

Where can you add some sort of gamification principles to your life?

Maybe it could be whilst you're driving to work.

Maybe it could be whilst you're brushing your teeth.

What could you do?

Use your imagination.

What could you do?

I've got a friend that puts himself into a yoga pose every time he brushes his teeth.

By doing this,

He turns a potentially mundane and repetitive thing into something completely different.

Also simplify your life.

Think Zen in every way.

How can you simplify your life?

I really believe that clutter and multitasking and taking on too much are like the anti-flow.

They're like the dark force of flow.

The opposite of that is removing clutter and removing distraction from your life and having a very minimalistic outlook.

I think that's very much the Eastern aesthetic of experiencing flow.

Those are just a few techniques for you to experience more flow in your life.

I hope you've appreciated this little flow nugget.

Share it around if you have.

Leave me a positive rating in iTunes.

Basically,

Leave a five-star rating in review and I'll be super grateful.

Otherwise,

I'll catch you next time for the next flow nugget.

See you.

Thanks for listening to the Flow State Performance Podcast.

Check us out at www.

Flowstateperformance.

Com for more inspiration to unleash your potential.

Reviews

Thank you ☺️

This was excellent and well communicated with clear examples of flow state and ways to align yourself to accepting the state. Thank you!

Great talk on flowstate. Thank you! 😌🤙🏽

This was the answer to what I’ve been searching for. Will definitely be listening to more flowstates!

Great introduction to the concert if flow, thank you. 🙂

Loved this talk! I've thought a lot about what "being in the flow" really means, and you hit it right on. I loved hearing the definitions for various professionals/backgrounds, because it helped me to better understand their definition vs mine. Many thanks!

Thank you - you covered a lot of ground in a really digestible way :-)

good brief overview

Clear and concise with sensible understandable advice.

Great talk. Always good to listen to a slighley different approach to the same destination. Thank you. Namaste 🙏

Excellent podcast! Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

Thanks heaps for this excellent inspirational talk about Flow!

Great points in flow

Gonna try to brush my teeth in Tree Pose! I flow creatively every day. I never plan a project, it just comes to me organically when I look at my bead collection. Namaste.

I keep trying to get a handle on what flow is. This is a great overview with practical suggestions for increasing flow. Thank you!

Great discussion! Helped me to think in multiple directions 🙏♥️🕊⚡

Super informative. Thank you 🙏🏽

Very informative. I will use some of your suggestions. Thank you so much.

Great explanation and I’m going to work on nurturing flow in my life!

Thank you, I’m not sure why I listened to this since I am not an athlete, but I found a very rewarding anyway, lots of food for thought thanks so much👍💖🙏