Entering a state of flow

Creativity is generally addictive for a very good reason -- the sensation of being in a state of full concentration or hyper-
concentration is both pleasant and productive. The author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi devotes three works to this and
related topics. He describes this state of "flow" as:

Over and over again, as people describe how it feels when they thoroughly enjoy themselves, they mention eight
distinct dimensions of experience. These same aspects are reported by Hindu yogis and Japanese teenagers who race
motorcycles, by American surgeons and basketball players, by Australian sailors and Navajo shepherds, by champion
figure skaters and by chess masters. These are the characteristic dimensions of the flow experience:

1. Clear goals: an objective is distinctly defined; immediate feedback: one knows instantly how well one is doing.

2. The opportunities for acting decisively are relatively high, and they are matched by one's perceived ability to act. In
other words, personal skills are well suited to given challenges.

3. Action and awareness merge; one-pointedness of mind.

4. Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli disappear from consciousness, worries and concerns are
temporarily suspended.

5. A sense of potential control.

6. Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego boundaries, a sense of growth and of being part of some greater
entity.

7. Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass faster.

8. Experience becomes autotelic: If several of the previous conditions are present, what one does becomes autotelic, or
worth doing for its own sake.

The Evolving Self - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 178-179

Think about what Csikszentmihalyi has said to describe the flow state.

1. Can you think of any times in your own life what you have been in a state of complete hyper-concentration?

2. What were those times?

3. What conditions existed in order for that state to occur?

Reviews the book 'Finding Flow,' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

By: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We all are capable of reaching that stateof effortless concentration and enjoyment called "flow." Here, the man who
literally wrote the book on flow presents his most lucid account yet of how to experience this blissful state.

IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE SKIING DOWN A SLOPE and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body
and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body, the position of the skis, the air whistling past your
face, and the snow-shrouded trees running by. There is no room in your awareness for conflicts or contradictions; you
know that a distracting thought or emotion might get you buried face down in the snow. The run is so perfect that you
want it to last forever.
If skiing does not mean much to you, this complete immersion in an experience could occur while you are singing in a
choir, dancing, playing bridge, or reading a good book. If you love your job, it could happen during a complicated
surgical operation or a close business deal. It may occur in a social interaction, when talking with a good friend, or while
playing with a baby. Moments such as these provide flashes of intense living against the dull background of everyday
life.

These exceptional moments are what I have called "flow" experiences. The metaphor of flow is one that many people
have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives.
Athletes refer to it as "being in the zone," religious mystics as being in "ecstasy," artists and musicians as "aesthetic
rapture."

It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. We can be happy experiencing
the passive pleasure of a rested body, warm sunshine, or the contentment of a serene relationship, but this kind of
happiness is dependent on favorable external circumstances. The happiness that follows flow is of our own making, and
it leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness.

WHERE TO FIND FLOW

Flow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses. It is easy to enter flow
in games such as chess, tennis, or poker, because they have goals and rules that make it possible for the player to act
without questioning what should be done, and how. For the duration of the game the player lives in a self-contained
universe where everything is black and white. The same clarity of goals is present if you perform a religious ritual, play a
musical piece, weave a rug, write a computer program, climb a mountain, or perform surgery. In contrast to normal life,
these "flow activities" allow a person to focus on goals that are clear and compatible, and provide immediate feedback.

Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so
it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. If challenges are too low, one gets back to flow by
increasing them. If challenges are too great, one can return to the flow state by learning new skills.

How often do people experience flow? If you ask a sample of typical Americans, "Do you ever get involved in something
so deeply that nothing else seems to matter and you lose track of time?" roughly one in five will say that this happens to
them as much as several times a day, whereas about 15 percent will say that this never happens to them. These
frequencies seem to he quite stable and universal. For instance, in a recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same
question was answered in the following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25 percent; Never or
Don't Know, 12 percent.

A more precise way to study flow is the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM, which I developed at the University of
Chicago in the early 1970s. This method provides a virtual filmstrip of a person's daily activities and experiences. At the
signal of a pager or watch, which goes off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day, a person writes
down in a booklet where she is, what she is doing, what she is thinking about, and whom she is with, then she rates her
state of consciousness on various numerical scales. At our Chicago laboratory, we have collected over the years a total
of 70,000 pages from about 2,300 respondents. Investigators in other parts of the world have more than tripled these
figures.

The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to
music, bowling, cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and surprisingly often at work. Very
rarely do people report flow in passive leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing.

Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements are present, so it is possible to improve the quality
of life by making sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday life.

FLOW AT WORK

Although adults tend to be less happy than average while working, and their motivation is considerably below normal,
ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. This finding is not that surprising: Work is much
more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It
provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales or
through an evaluation by one's supervisor. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally,
its difficulties match the worker's skills.
Nevertheless, if we had the chance most of us would like to work less. One reason is the historical disrepute of work,
which each of us learn as we grow up.

Yet we can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are few
options when we realize that our job is useless or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as
possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always better to do
something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable.
Such decisions are notoriously difficult and require great honesty with oneself.

Short of making such a dramatic switch, there are many ways to make one's job produce flow. A supermarket clerk who
pays genuine attention to customers, a physician concerned about the total well-being of patients, or a news reporter
who considers truth at least as important as sensational interest when writing a story, can transform a routine job into
one that makes a difference. Turning a dull jot into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves
paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more
efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying
to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would
enjoy working--more and probably be more successful. When approached without too many cultural prejudices and with
a determination to make it personally meaningful, even the most mundane job can produce flow.

The same type of approach is needed for solving the problem of stress at work. First, establish priorities among the
demands that crowd into consciousness. Successful people often make lists or flowcharts of all the things they have to
do, and quickly decide which tasks they can delegate or forget, and which ones they have to tackle personally, and in
what order. The next step is to match one's skills with whatever challenges have been identified. There will be tasks we
feel incompetent to deal with. Can you learn the skills required in time? Can you get help? Can the task be transformed,
or broken into simpler parts? Usually the answer to one of these questions will provide a solution;that transforms a
potentially stressful situation into a flow experience.

FLOW AT PLAY

In comparison to work, people often lack a clear purpose when spending time at home with the family or alone. The
popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence
suggests the opposite: Free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Apparently, our nervous system has evolved to
attend to external signals, but has not had time to adapt to long periods without obstacles and dangers. Unless one
learns how to use this time effectively, having leisure at one's disposal does not improve the quality of life.

Leisure time in our society is occupied by three major sorts of activities: media consumption, conversation, and active
leisure--such as hobbies, making music, going to restaurants and movies, sports, and exercise. Not all of these free-
time activities are the same in their potential for flow. For example, U.S. teenagers experience flow about 13 percent of
the time that they spend watching television, 34 percent of the time they do hobbies, and 44 percent of the time they are
involved in sports and games. Yet these same teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV
than doing hobbies or sports. Similar ratios are true for adults.

Why would we spend four times more of our free time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us
feel good? Each of the flow-producing activities requires an initial investment of attention before it begins to be
enjoyable. If a person is too tired, anxious, or lacks the discipline to overcome that initial obstacle, he or she will have to
settle for something that, although less enjoyable, is more accessible.

It is not that relaxing is had. Everyone needs time to unwind, to read trashy novels, to sit on the. couch staring into
space or watching TV What matters is the dosage. In a large-scale

study in Germany, it was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim
to have, while the opposite trend was found for watching television.

To make the best use of free time, one needs to devote as much ingenuity and attention to it as one would to one's job.
Active leisure that helps a person grow does not come easily. In fact, before science and the arts became
professionalized, a great deal of scientific research, poetry, painting, and musical composition was carried out in a
person's free time. And all folk--art the songs, fabrics, pottery, and carvings that give each culture its particular identity
and renown--is the result of common people striving to express their best skill in the time left free from work and
maintenance chores. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way of each of us becoming a poet or
musician, an inventor or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector.

SOCIAL FLOW

Of all the things we do, interaction with others is the least predictable. At one moment we experience flow, the next
apathy, anxiety, relaxation, or boredom. Over and over, however, our findings suggest that people get depressed when
they are alone, and that they revive when they rejoin the company of others. The moods that people with chronic
depression or eating disorders experience are indistinguishable from those of healthy people as long as they are in
company and doing something that requires concentration. But when they are alone with nothing to do, their minds
begin to be occupied by depressing thoughts, and their consciousness becomes scattered. This is also true, to a less
pronounced extent, of everyone else.

The reason is that when we have to interact with another person, even stranger, our attention becomes structured by
external demands. In more intimate encounters, the level of both challenges and skills can grow very high. Thus,
interactions have many of the characteristics of flow activities, and they certainly require the orderly investment of
mental energy. The strong effects of companionship on the quality of experience suggest that investing energy in
relationships is a good way to improve life.

A successful interaction involves finding some compatibility between our goals and those of the other person or
persons, and becoming willing to invest attention in the other person's goals. When these conditions are met, it is
possible to experience the flow that comes from optimal interaction. For example, to experience the simple pleasures of
parenting, one has to pay attention, to know what the child is "proud of" or "into"; then to share those activities with her.
The same holds true for any other type of interaction. The secret of starting a good conversation is to find out what the
other person's goals are: What is he interested in at the moment? What is she involved in? What has he or she
accomplished, or is trying to accomplish? If any of this sounds worth pursuing, the next step is to utilize one's own
experience or expertise on the topics raised by the other person--without trying to take over the conversation, but
developing it jointly. A good conversation is like a jam session in jazz, where one starts with conventional elements and
then introduces spontaneous variations that create an exciting new composition.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

A deprived childhood, abusive parents, poverty, and a host of other external reasons may make it difficult for a person to
find joy in everyday life. On the other hand, there are so many examples of individuals who overcame such obstacles
that the belief that the quality of life is determined from the outside is hardly tenable. How much stress we experience
depends more on how well we control attention than on what happens to us. The effect of physical pain, a monetary
loss, or a social snub depends on how much attention we pay to it. To deny, repress, or misinterpret such events is no
solution either, because the information will keep smoldering in the recesses of the mind. It is better to look suffering
straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect its presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we
choose to focus on.

To learn to control attention, any skill or discipline one can master on one's own will serve: meditation and prayer,
exercise, aerobics, martial arts. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what
matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one's attention.

It is also important to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention. Even the most
routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn, become more rewarding if we approach them with the
care it would take to make a work of art. We must then transfer some psychic energy each day from tasks that we don't
like doing, or from passive leisure, into something we never did before, or something we enjoy doing but don't do often
enough because it seems too much trouble. This sounds simple, but many people have no idea which components of
their lives they actually enjoy. Keeping a diary or reflecting on the past day in the evening are ways to take stock
systematically of the various influences on one's moods. After it is clear which activities produce the high points in one's
day, it becomes possible to start experimenting, by increasing the frequency of the positive ones and decreasing that of
others.

To make a creative change in the quality of experience, it might be useful to experiment with one's surroundings as well.
Outings and vacations help to clear the mind, to change perspectives, to look at one's situation with a fresh eye. Taking
charge of one's home or office environment--throwing out the excess, redecorating to one's taste, making it personally
and psychologically comfortable--could be the first step in reordering one's life.
With time of day as with the other parameters of life, it is important to find out what rhythms are the most congenial to
you personally. There is no day or hour that is best for everyone. Experimenting with various alternatives--getting up
earlier, taking a nap in the afternoon, eating at different times--helps one to find the best set of options.

Many people will say that this advice is useless to them, because they already have so many demands on their time
that they absolutely cannot afford to do anything new or interesting. But more often than not, time stress is an excuse for
not taking control of one's life. As the historian E. P. Thompson noted, even in the most oppressive decades of the
Industrial Revolution, when workers slaved away for more than 80 hours a week, some spent their few precious free
hours engaging in literary pursuits or political action instead of following the majority into the pubs. Likewise, we don't
have to let time run through our fingers. How many of our demands could be reduced if we put some energy into
prioritizing, organizing, and streamlining the routines that now fritter away our attention? One must learn to husband
time carefully, in order to enjoy life in the here and now.

FINDING A GOAL

Flow is a source of mental energy in that it focuses attention and motivates action. Like other forms of energy, it can be
used for constructive or destructive purposes. Teenagers arrested for vandalism or robbery often have no other
motivation than the excitement they experience stealing a car or breaking into a house. War veterans say that they
never felt such intense flow as when they were behind a machine gun on the front lines. Thus, it is not enough to strive
for enjoyable goals, but one must also choose goals that will reduce the sum total of entropy in the world.

How can we find a goal that will allow us to enjoy life while being responsible to others? Buddhists advise us to "act
always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever
you do makes any difference." This serious playfulness makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same
time. We may also discover the foundations on which to build a good life from the knowledge scientists are slowly
accumulating. The findings of science makes us increasingly aware of how unique each person is. Not only in the way
the ingredients of the genetic code have been combined, but also in the time and place in which an organism
encounters life. Thus each of us is responsible for one particular point in space and time in which our body and mind
forms a link within the total network of existence. We can focus consciousness on the tasks of everyday life in the
knowledge that when we act in the fullness of the flow experience, we are also building a bridge to the future of the
universe.

From Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Copyright 1997 by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Reprinted by arrangement
with BasicBooks, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Psychology Today, Jul/Aug 97

The "Flow" of Talent Development by Sam Whalen, PhD

Have you ever become so wrapped up in a book or puzzle that you lost track of time? Or worked through the intricacies
of a piece of music to the point that you knew it "by heart," finally getting a feel for just how you wanted it performed? Or
spent hours at a computer screen, skipping dinner so you could crack the code and reach the next level of play? These
are experiences that we sometimes take for granted, especially if we have a taste for challenges or a need to stay
active. But recent research with people from all walks of life is showing that the capacity to enjoy such "flow
experiences" is critical both to happiness and creativity.

For the last two years, CTD researchers have been exploring ways to measure flow experiences in order to understand
how CTD students can take on the challenges of Shakespeare or calculus more enjoyably. Building on research
described in the volume Talented Teenagers: The Roots of Success and Failure (Cambridge University Press, 1993),
co-authored by CTD's previous Research Director Sam Whalen with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Kevin Rathonde, CTD
has been trying to construct a "Flow Activities Assessment" that reveals how frequently our students experience flow,
what activities provide flow, and how intensely flow occurs in areas of special talent. This is one of the surveys that we
have asked our summer students to complete before arriving at the Northwestern campus [when? this year? over the
past how many years?]. With their help, we are beginning to appreciate the range of interests our students bring to our
programs, as well as the difficulties some students encounter in engaging their areas of talent more enjoyably.
Early research into flow experiences began with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's studies of creativity and motivation.
Csikszentmihalyi, a professor at the University of Chicago, began with a fundamental question: What is it about art,
athletics, music, science and other disciplines that causes some people to forego life's usual rewards and
pleasuresóthings like sex, money, food and sleep? In a book entitled Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Jossey-Bass,
1975), Csikszentmihalyi wrote that highly engaged people in disciplines from basketball to brain surgery report the same
pattern of experience: an altered sense of time, deep involvement, acute concentration on the task at hand, and a sense
of easy "give-and-take" between the demands of the activity and the person's capacity to meet those demands. While
people in his study employed many terms to describe this experience, one word emerged particularly often: the sense
that one was "flowing" within the challenges of the moment. Thus the term "flow" was adopted to capture this unusual
fluidity between person and activity.

CTD's new Flow Activities Assessment builds on this research and may eventually broaden our understanding of how
flow experiences link to talent development. The first part of the assessment lists six experiences that research has
linked both to flow and talent development:

• Losing track of time

• The personal need to do the activity well
• The sense of skillfulness
• High personal interest
• High challenge
• Sense that the activity offers opportunities for self-expression

We ask our students to list activities that provide each of these experiences, both during or outside of school. The
second part of the assessment asks students to reflect on which activities in their lives pull all or most of these
perceptions together into one experience, then to tell us how much time they spend in each such activity in an average
week. These are the activities we believe furnish the most powerful periods of flow. Finally, we ask students to tell us
which conditions in their daily lives disrupt flow experiences, as well as what strategies they may have learned to
sustain enjoyable concentration.

Part of the process of developing any assessment is determining its validity of that is, the degree to which it really
measures what it claims to measure. In this case, we are now investigating two questions: do the survey responses
yield activities with the properties associated with flow; and does the survey really distinguish people according to
whether they experience flow more frequently or in more activities? Our preliminary results have been encouraging.
First, as we would hope, we find high correspondence between the activities listed under specific experiences and those
activities listed as pulling these experiences together. Second, the activities listed under specific experiences are
consistent with earlier research using the self-reports of talented teenagers. For example, school subjects like math and
science tend to be seen as very important but low in self-expression, while music and art reverse this pattern.

The survey reveals great variation among our students in how many activities they report as flow-like, as well as the
variety of activities that produce flow. This doesn't surprise us, knowing our students; but it has given us a clearer
appreciation for the diversity of experiences they bring each summer to our programs. Especially important, the reports
of the activities seen as combining the six experiences are very predictive about our students' commitment to their
talents. For example, those students in our 1995 sample who reported math as a "combined" flow activity also reported
significantly higher interest in math, were significantly more likely to prefer math over verbal subjects, and had stronger
career aspirations in math and engineering, as assessed with independent instruments.

While we are excited about the research potential of this survey, we are even more hopeful that it can be developed as
a tool for career and personal counseling. For example, some students who come to our summer programs indicate that
they become deeply involved only in school-related activities. Others indicate just the opposite: their lives are filled with
"important" activities, while they report few pastimes or school courses that inspire intense interest or allow for self-
expression. Some students report such a wealth of flow experiences that it is hard to imagine when they have time to
relax. Whatever the specific pattern, we think counselors can use this assessment to talk with gifted students about
personal choices and career paths that build on their strengths and promise both success and deep satisfaction in adult
life.
Dr. Whalen presented the early findings of CTD's assessment at the 1996 Rosen Symposium on Gifted Child
Development at the University of Kansas and at the American Educational Research Association convention in March
1997 in Chicago. We are especially eager to understand how some students learn to enjoy flow in school subjects like
math and English literature, and whether those lessons can be "taught" to others who have the talent but not yet the
"feel" for those disciplines.

FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE

(Steps Toward Enhancing the Quality of Life)
Mihaly Csiksczentmihalyi
One must particularly achieve control over instinctive drives to achieve a healthy independence of society, for as
long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our
preferences for their own ends.
The knowledge - or wisdom - one needs for emancipating consciousness is not cumulative. It is not a cognitive
skill and as well as intelligence requires commitment of emotions and will. It is not enough to know how to do it,
one must do it consistently and it is a painfully slow process to modify our own habits and desires.
Pleasure by itself does not bring happiness. We can experience pleasure (e.g. eating, sleeping, sex) without an
investment of psychic energy. Enjoyment on the other hand, happens only as a result of an unusual amount of
attention. Pleasure is fleeting and, unlike enjoyment, does not bring complexity (growth) to the self. If one only
invests energy in new directions solely for extrinsic rewards, one may end up no longer enjoying life, and pleasures
become the only source of positive experience. Without enjoyment life can be endured and can even be pleasant.
But it can be so only precariously, depending on luck and the cooperation of the external environment.
Eight Components of Enjoyment
1. Confronting tasks that we have a chance of completing.
2. Concentration.
3. Concentration is possible because the task has clear goals.
4. Task provides immediate feedback.
5. A deep, effortless involvement removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
6. Enjoyable experiences allow one to exercise a sense of control over one’s actions.
7. Concern for self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is
over.
8. Sense of time is altered - hours pass by in minutes.
When experience is intrinsically rewarding, one’s life is justified in the present, instead of one being held hostage to
a hypothetical future, but we must constantly re-evaluate what we do, lest habits and past ‘wisdom’ blind us to new
possibilities. The flow experience - like anything else - is not "good" in an absolute sense, but only in that it has the
potential to make life richer, more intense and meaningful. One must distinguish between useful and harmful forms
of flow, making the most of the former and limiting the latter.

Commencement of learning something is a flow situation – everything is new and flow absorption is present as one
struggles to master the skill. As one progresses, either boredom will ensue because there is no more challenge
(the skill has been learned at that level) or anxiety occurs because a bigger challenge than we can cope with
presents itself. Either way, one wants to get back to flow, either by overcoming the anxiety challenge by becoming
more skilled, or taking on a challenge that will overcome the boredom, thus getting back into flow at a more
complex level.
Effects of Family on Autotelic (Self-contained Goal)Experience
Happiness (flow) in a family depends greatly on how much energy members invest in the mutual relationship and
especially each other’s goals.
If a person is unwilling to adjust personal goals when starting a relationship, then a lot of what happens in that
relationship will produce disorder in the person's consciousness because new patterns of interaction will conflict
with old patterns of expectations. If not revised, old goals will produce frustration and entropy - if goals are
changed the self will change too, a necessary transformation for a positive relationship.
To make family life enjoyable, positive goals are necessary to focus psychic energies of parents and children on
common tasks. Some goals can be general and long-term e.g. planning a particular life style. For such goals to
result in interactions that will increase the complexity of its members, the family must be both differentiated and
integrated. Differentiation encourages each person to develop unique traits, maximize personal skills, set individual
goals. Integration guarantees that what happens to one affects all the others - each person's goals matter to all
others.
Short term goals are also important, planning a vacation, playing a game that a family is willing to share so as to be
physically together as well as involved in an enjoyable joint activity. Family activities, like other flow processes,
should also provide clear feedback - keeping open channels of communication. Unless this is so there is no
opportunity to reduce inevitable tension. Unless the members of the family invest psychic energy in the relationship
(creativity, communication) conflicts are inevitable, because each has goals that are somewhat divergent from the
goals of the other members. Without good lines of communication, the distortions will become amplified, until the
relationship falls apart.
Instead of abandoning this plan as children mature and express the opinion that family activities as a group are
"dumb", the more fruitful if more difficult strategy is to find a new set of activities that will continue to keep the family
group involved.
Involving children in the flow activities of the parents at an early stage may attract their attention and, finding them
challenging, will help them grow. Also, if parents talked more about their ideals and dreams - even if these had
been frustrated - the children might develop the ambition needed to break through the complacency of their present
selves.
Unconditional acceptance of the child by the parents allows him to relax and explore the world without fear;
otherwise psychic energy is directed to his own protection, reducing the amount he can use for flow experiences.
Without emotional security it is difficult to let go of the self long enough to experience flow. This doesn't mean no
standards or no punishment for breaking the rules. When there is no risk attached to transgressing rules, they
become meaningless, and without meaningful rules an activity cannot be enjoyable. Children must know parents
expect certain things from them and that specific consequences will follow if they don't obey. But they must also
know that no matter what, the parents' concern for them is not in question.
Children raised in a stable environment are more apt to experience autotelic flow. They know what their parents
expect - goals and feedback are clear; they know their parents are interested in the here and now of their lives, not
whether they will get into a good college/get a good job; they have freedom of choice including breaking the rules
as long as they are ready to face the consequences; commitment/trust allows the child to set aside defenses and
get totally involved; parents challenge the child through increasingly complex opportunities.
When a family has a common purpose and open channels of communication, when it provides gradually expanding
opportunities for action in a setting of trust, then life in it becomes an enjoyable flow activity. Its members will
spontaneously focus attention on the group relationship and to a certain extent forget their individual selves and
their divergent goals to experience the joy of belonging to a more complex system that joins separate
consciousness in a unified goal. Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for
one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting investment of attention. Otherwise it is just
an empty gesture, a hypocritical pretence indistinguishable from disinterest.
In unstable families a lot of energy is used in constant negotiations and strife and in the children's attempts to
protect their fragile selves from being overwhelmed by other people's goals.
When adversity threatens to paralyse us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction for psychic energy
- a source outside the reach of external forces. Narcissistic people, mainly concerned with self, fall apart when
external forces turn threatening. The panic prevents them from doing what they must do; attention turns inward to
try to restore order to consciousness and not enough remains to negotiate outside reality and without interest in the
world - a desire to be related to it - a person becomes isolated into himself.
Bertrand Russell said "Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my
attention increasingly on external objects, the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for
whom I felt affection." This is how to build an autotelic, self-actualized personality.
Unless a person knows how to give order to his/her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most
problematic at the moment; it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term
frustrations. Entropy (chaos) is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first usually end up
making things worse all around.
Why are some weakened by stress, while others gain strength from it? The ones who grow have learned to
transform a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled, enjoy themselves and emerge
stronger.
Three Steps in the Transformation:
1. Unselfconscious self-assurance - evidenced in severe physical ordeals. Arctic explorers wandering alone
believe their destiny is in their hands but the ego is absent. They do not see themselves in opposition to the
environment but realize they have to sublimate or adapt their goals to the system in which they must operate at the
time (e.g. car won't start when in a hurry to get somewhere so it is necessary to adapt - call a cab, cancel
appointment, etc. instead of getting more and more frustrated by turning the ignition key.)
2. Focus attention on the world - by paying attention to what is occurring around oneself, looking outward, the
effects are lessened. One becomes part of the environment, participating in it, helping one find a better way to
adapt to a problematic situation. New possibilities are likely to emerge which may suggest new responses and one
is less likely to be entirely cut off from the stream of life.
3. Discovery of new solutions - one can focus on the obstacles to one's goals and move them out of the way or
focus on the entire situation to discover if alternative goals wouldn't be better - thus different solutions would be
possible.
The Making of Meaning
As long as enjoyment follows piecemeal from activities not linked to one another in a meaningful way, one is still
subject to the vagaries of chaos. The ultimate goal - no matter what it is - must be compelling enough to order a
lifetime's worth of psychic energy and give significance to one's life. This is achieving purpose.
The purpose must result in strivings, intent has to be translated into action which is resolution in the pursuit of one's
goals. "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." - William Blake
Someone who knows his desires and works with purpose to achieve them is a person whose thoughts, feelings
and actions are congruent and has therefore achieved inner harmony.
Four Stages to Cultivate Purpose
[Note the In/Out 'tide flow' of the 4 steps - A is 'in', B is 'out', C is 'in', D is 'out'.[
A. Everyone begins with a need to preserve self, to keep the body and its basic goals from disintegrating
(survival, comfort, pleasure).
B. When bodily safety is no longer in doubt, one may expand one’s horizons to include family, neighbourhood,
religious or ethnic groups leading to more complexity even though it usually implies conformity to conventional
norms and standards. Many get 'stuck' in this mode, not desiring to go beyond.
C. The next step is reflective individualism, turning inward to find new grounds for authority and value. One
no longer blindly conforms but develops an autonomous conscience. The main goal becomes the desire for
growth, improvement and actualization of potential. Fewer still reach this level.
D. The fourth step, building on all the others, is a final turning away from the self, back toward an integration
with others and with universal values. This extremely individualized person willingly merges his interests with those
of a larger whole - a cause, an idea, a transcendental entity.
Forging Resolve
Purpose gives direction but doesn't necessarily make life easier. Goals can lead to all sorts of trouble and one is
tempted to give them up and find some less demanding script to order one's actions. However, the price paid for
changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while life may become more pleasant and comfortable, it is
likely to end up empty and void of meaning. Because there is such a wide variety of choices, increasing as humans
and life in general become more complex, it is imperative that one knows oneself. A review of one's actions one or
more times a day to see if what one has been doing is consistent with long term goals is one route to self-
knowledge (the Jesuits' meditation). Action by itself is blind, reflection by itself impotent. It pays one to raise the
fundamental questions: is it something I want to do; - do I enjoy it; - will I enjoy it in the foreseeable future; - is the
price I (and others) will have to pay worth it? If one doesn't know oneself, these seemingly simple questions are
difficult or impossible to answer.
Unification of Meaning in Life Themes
Goal-directed actions provide shape and meaning to one's life, giving it a 'life-theme' and consciousness achieves
harmony.
However, not all life themes are equally productive. Authentic projects tend to be intrinsically motivated, chosen for
what they are worth in themselves; inauthentic ones are motivated by external focus. A similar distinction is that
which is between discovered life themes, when a person writes the script for her actions out of personal
experiences and awareness of choices; and accepted life themes, when a person simply takes on a predetermined
role from a script written long ago by others.
Discovered life themes can seem crazy or destructive to others because they come from personal struggles to
define the purpose of life and they may have less social legitimacy, being outside the norm, yet be absolutely
essential for one to find, via the trial/error process, what has true value for the self.
Accepted life themes make one vulnerable to the intentions and agendas of others and can trap the person into
perverted goals.
To find purpose in suffering, one must interpret it as a possible challenge. What transforms the consequences of a
traumatic event into a challenge that gives meaning to life is one's development of a "dissipative structure", i.e. the
ability to break down an unusable whole into useable parts, to draw order from disorder. If one assumes that
external events must determine psychic outcomes, then it makes sense to see the neurotic response to suffering
as normal; and the constructive response as 'defence' or 'sublimation'. But if one assumes that people have a
choice in how they respond to external events, in what meaning they attribute to suffering, then one can interpret
the constructive response as normal and the neurotic one as a failure to rise to the challenge, as a breakdown in
the ability to flow.
According to Dante in "The Inferno", in Hell one can witness the sufferings of those who had never chosen a goal,
and the even worse fate of those whose purpose in life had been to increase entropy - the so-called sinners.
To extract meaning from a system of beliefs, one must first compare the information contained in it with one’s own
concrete experience, retain what makes sense, and then reject the rest.

Cycling in the Zone

Sam Marye Lewis, M.A., M.F.T.

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the concept of being in the zone as it applies to cycling. It questions how a cyclist can be in the
zone, and how it might differ from the experience of athletes in other sports. There is an abundance of literature about
playing in the zone, in the flow, optimal experience, and peak performance for athletes in many sports. However,
research is minimal or non-existent on the experiences of cyclists and the zone. There are numerous definitions of
playing in the zone, and these experiences are undoubtedly unique and individual, both to the athlete and to the sport.
How do cyclists experience the zone? This paper will focus on endurance and suffering as a zone, or precursor to the
zone experience, which may explain how cyclists in grueling and competitive long-distance races can endure to the
finish line. This discussion will emphasize the performance and experiences of the professional athlete in cycling sports.

Introduction

The experience of an athlete in competition has both physical and mental components. We recognize and admire
the physical abilities and skills that the athlete has acquired, the years of training, the triumphs and the defeats. But
there is also another component, the spiritual and psychological dimensions involved in sports. The meaning of sport to
an individual athlete varies widely: from financial gain, to glory, to pursuit of a personal best, or to setting a world record.
Whatever the extrinsic motivation might be, some athletes report experiencing a state of focused energy, or a
transcendent state of well being, or an altered sense of time, or being "on a high." These intrinsic, rewarding moments
are often difficult to describe, but enhance the athletic performance and contribute to the sense of self-mastery, optimal
performance, and the spiritual experience in sports. Andrew Cooper (1998) wrote Playing in the Zone to explore the
spiritual and metaphysical impact that sport has on our inner lives. Murphy and White first published In the Zone in
1978, from their investigation of transcendent experience in sport.
This paper asks if it is possible, while suffering the constant pain that elite cyclists endure, for these cyclists to
enter a zone that we have not previously considered? A zone that allows the cyclist to continue against great odds and
overcome injuries, pain and fatigue to finish a race. A zone that does not include the "high" that is present in some other
sports.

Differing Perceptions of the Zone

Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, (1999) give testimonial quotes from an elite cyclist named "Simon," who
experienced the phenomena of flow, or optimal performance while on the "tour," finishing the grueling race with a 7k
climb:

"I was totally absorbed, 110 percent; that was all that mattered in the whole existence. It just amazed me how I
could maintain such high concentration for three hours. I'm used to having my mind wander, especially under
pressure. My body felt great. Nothing, you feel like just nothing can go wrong and there's nothing that will be
able to stop you or get in your way. And you're ready to tackle anything, and you don't fear any possibility
happening, and it's just exhilarating. Afterward, I couldn't come down, I was on a high. I felt like I wanted to go
ride, ride up that hill again (p.9).

While Simon's ride is a wonderful example of the flow state, this does not seem to be the experience of most elite
cyclists in world championship events. Time and time again, their interviews indicate a state of intense pain and
suffering during the race. Miguel Indurain, twice winner of the Tour de France, and the Giro d'Italia said, "Everybody tells
me that I never look as if I'm suffering. But, when I watch videotapes of a race, I always remember the pain I had to
endure" (Abt, 1993, p. 18). Ron Kiefel, team captain for Motorola, said, "Your body hurts, your lungs hurt, you're
breathing as hard as you can, you don't feel you can squeeze any more power out of your legs, and you're just trying to
settle down and get in a good rhythm" (Abt, 1993, p.62). Chris Boardman described Stage 21 of the 1996 Tour De
France as "suffering for eight hours…the most unpleasant experience I've ever had" (Abt, 1997, p.124).

Experiencing the Zone

The zone has been described as a spiritual experience, a transcendent state, going beyond the self, a mystical
experience with exceptional feats of strength and endurance. Some refer to the zone as an exhilarating, uplifting event,
with a sense of mastery and control, or a sense of invincibility. Murphy and White(1995) wrote about the phenomena of
mystical moments and extraordinary functioning in sports and called it the "spiritual underground" (p.1) They described
extraordinary feats such as exceptional energy, extraordinary strength, speed and endurance where athletes rise to a
level of performance that seems impossible, almost superhuman (pp.74-84).
The runner' high is the well know and most recognized example of peak moments or being in the zone. Sachs
(1984) describes the runner' high as, "A euphoric sensation experienced during running, usually unexpected, in which
the runner feels a heightened sense of well-being, enhanced appreciation of nature, and transcendence of barriers of
time and space" (p. 274). However, George Sheehan (1978), the original guru of runners, frequently spoke of suffering
experienced during marathons.
Chapter fifteen in his book is titled "Suffering," wherein he speaks about his experiences in the Boston Marathon,
and states he was, "deeper and deeper into a cauldron of pain" (p. 215). Talking about distance running, he quotes
Buddha, "As long as you are in time there's suffering." (p. 250)
Andrew Cooper (1998) describes qualities of the zone as "profound joy, acute intuition (which at times feels like
precognition), a feeling of effortlessness in the midst of intense exertion, a sense of the action taking place in slow
motion, feelings of awe and perfection, increased mastery, and self-transcendence" (p. 33). Cooper says, "In these
ecstatic moments, something altogether transcendent pierces the cloud of life's confusion to illuminate an underlying
perfection" (p. 37). In addition to the spiritual dimension, Cooper writes about "the athlete's craft" (p.44), describing the
conditions necessary for the zone: craftsmanship, devotion to the game, and immersion in the activity. Jackson and
Csikszentmihalyi (1999) list the components of flow which are fundamental to optimal experience and performance in
sports. Among the components is "transcendent awareness" (p. 64), which, for a cyclist, is characterized by total
absorption and focus on the ride. Self-consciousness, distractions and irrelevant thoughts are absent. While suggesting
that the athlete forget himself or herself, the authors say, "Actually, awareness of the body and its movements is often
heightened in the flow" (p. 67).
For elite cyclists, this awareness of the body seems to be awareness of the pain that they are experiencing. Frankie
Andreu's diary of the 1998 Tour De France (VeloPress, 1998) chronicles numerous moments of suffering. He speaks of
Stage 10, and climbing the Col du Tourmalet, with a 6393 foot summit and an 8 grade, "After freezing in the wet, the
next climb was the Tourmalet, 18km straight up into the clouds and rain. I was so cold coming down the hill, I couldn't
stop my legs or body from shaking. It was hard for me to control my bike to make the corners...When I reached the
bottom, I could barely pedal, my legs feeling like icicles. I was afraid to push on the pedals because it felt like I would
break some tendons or something" (p. 102). Seventeen riders quit that day: Andreu comments on another rider, Johann
Bruyneel, "Bruyneel quit because he had been riding with a broken rib since a crash he had in Ireland. I don't know how
he went as long as he did" (p. 103). Andreu says, "When I'm climbing the mountain at my maximum effort, I won't even
notice a temperature change, until one kilometer from the top. This is when I notice how soaking wet I am and try to
figure out how to stay warm for the downhill. When the cold air slams against your wet body at 70kph, you freeze after
about three minutes on the descent" (p. 103). The Tour de France is over one hundred years old and gives the best
examples of the suffering that cyclists must endure in order to compete. Andreu sums it up by saying, "It was another
extreme day…that only the Tour can provide" (p. 106).

Research on the Zone

The question is, then, what factors contribute to the heroic effort and endurance that sustains these cyclists? Of
course, training, skill and determination are components, but there has to be another intangible component. A small
number of researchers have investigated peak moments or flow states and have attempted to develop theories and
models of peak performance. Grove and Lewis (1996, p380-391) investigated hypnotic susceptibility and the attainment
of flow states during exercise. Their study focused on exercise participants in non-competitive, circuit training class.
They propose that hypnotic susceptibility is a variable of the flow state, and quote, "From a phenomenological
perspective, flowlike states are similar to hypnotic states. Shared elements of these states include
dissociation/detachment from one's surroundings, absorption, feelings of control, and perceptual distortions such as
altered perceptions of time" (p. 381). K.S. Masters (1992) observed a positive correlation between cognitive dissociation
and hypnotic susceptibility in marathon runners (p. 193-201).
Grove and Lewis conclude that an antecedent of the flowlike state, or zone, is the disposition-oriented factor of
hypnotic susceptibility. They propose that athletes possessing traits consistent with the autotelic personality
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) are more inclined to experience hypnotic susceptibility, and thus attain flowlike states. Jackson
and Csikszentmihalyi, (1999), describe flow as an "autotelic experience, to denote a state of mind that is intrinsically
rewarding. The word autotelic is derived from two Greek words that describe doing something for its own sake
(auto=self; telos=goal.)" (p. 11). The authors list flow component number nine as autotelic experience, "one that is
intrinsically rewarding, one that we choose to do for its own sake" (p. 30). Jackson and Marsh (1996) developed The
Flow State Scale to assess and measure the construct of flow in sport. The researchers investigated the nine
dimensions of flow in sport (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi,1999). While acknowledging that there are challenges and
limitations in attempting to quantify experiential states, the authors did note that that the dimension of "Autotelic
Experience is crucial to the flow experience…this factor may be seen as having a more global nature than the other flow
dimensions" (p. 30). Jackson and Marsh also state,

The fact that other dimensions such as concentration, control and challenge-skill balance had higher factor
loadings than autotelic experience may indicate that the enjoyment factor is less central than other aspects of
flow to athletes. Perhaps enjoyment is taken for granted to some extent in a free choice activity like sport.
Another possibility may be that because of the goal-directed nature of competitive sport, enjoyment is seen as a
somewhat antithetical to the serious nature of the endeavor (p. 30).

These researchers acknowledge that all of the dimensions of the flow or zone may not be universal to all sports.

Conclusion

Given the serious nature of professional competition such as the Tour de France, and the Giro d'Italia, combined
with the intense degree of suffering by the cyclists, this paper proposes that professional cyclists enter a zone that may
not include an experience equivalent to a runner's high. The victorious cyclist may be elated and ecstatic when crossing
the finish line. However, the mystical experience, the sense of well being and spiritual experience elude the cyclist
during the ride. There is simply too much intensity of effort, pain and suffering during a race to coexist with the kind of
exhilaration and elated feelings that cyclist "Simon" was quoted as experiencing. To sustain and endure pain and
suffering over long periods of time, the cyclist, as well as the marathon runner, must enter a zone that differs from the
zone experienced by athletes in other sports.
For elite cyclists, critical dimensions for the zone would seem to be the autotelic experience, the total absorption in
the ride, and being in "kairos" time. The Greeks had two words for time: kairos and kronos. Bolen (1996) defines kairos
time as "when we participate in time and lose our sense of time passing, we are in kairos; here we are totally absorbed
and in the present moment, which may actually stretch out over hours" (p. 86).
The other important dimension of the cycling zone is the trait of hypnotic susceptibility, which would allow the
cyclist to dissociate from the pain and extreme conditions that must be endured during a race, such as the Tour. This
dissociation, combined with the total focus and absorption of transcendent awareness (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi
1999), would explain the ability to overcome suffering and perform, even to the death. In 1967, during the 13 stage of
the Tour de France, "…on a July afternoon of suffocating heat… Britain's best-ever cyclist, Tom Simpson, rode himself
to a standstill, keeled over and died" (Conquests and Crises, 1999, p. 125).
Greg LeMond commented on the ability to endure suffering, "The key is being able to endure psychologically. When
you're not riding well, you think, why suffer? Why push yourself for four or five hours? The mountains are the pinnacle of
suffering" (Abt, p. 4). He also said, "If the average person tried professional cycling, he'd say, 'My God, I can't believe
how tough this is.' I believe that cycling is the toughest sport of all…" (Abt, p. 11). Abt writes about the cyclist's ability to
bear pain and keep pedaling. "Suffering is what professional cycling is all about, and champions suffer the longest. The
ability to suffer can be heightened through training, which is why racers go out on the road for up to seven hours most
days during winter and early spring" (p. 131). Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor and winner of the 1999 Tour de France,
is cycling's most recent example of the ability to endure against all odds, suffer and be victorious. His focused
determination and perseverance, and his ability to endure and overcome pain are an inspiration to everyone, and a
perfect illustration of cycling in the zone.

References

Abt, S. (1997). Pedaling for glory: Victory and drama in professional bicycle racing. Oaceola, WI: Motor Books
International Publishers and Wholesalers.

Abt, S., Startt,J. (1999). In pursuit of the yellow jersey: Bicycle racing in the year of the tortured tour. San Francisco,
CA: Van der Plas Publications.

Abt, S. (1993). Champion: Bicycle racing in the age of Miguel Indurain. Mill Valley CA: Bicycle Books Inc.
 Abt, S. (1990). LeMond: The incredible comeback of an American hero. New York: Random House Inc.

Baum, K., Trubo, R. (1999). The mental edge: Maximize your sports potential with the mind-body connection. New
York: Berkley Publishing Group.

Boga, S. (1992). Cyclists: how the worlds most daring riders train and compete. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books.

Bolen, J. S. (1979). The tao of psychology: Synchronicity and the self. San Francisco, CA: Harper.

Buzzati, D. (1999). The giro d'Italia: Coppi versus Bartali at the 1949 tour of Italy. Boulder, CO: VeloPress.

Cooper, A. (1998). Playing in the zone: Exploring the spiritual dimensions of sports. Boston: Shambhala
Publications Inc.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Perennial.

Grant, R. (1988). The psychology of sport: Facing one's true opponent. Jefferson, NC: McFarlan and Company Inc.

Grove, J., Lewis, M. (1996). Hypnotic susceptibility and the attainment of flowlike states during exercise. Journal of
Sport & Exercise Psychology, 18, 380-391.

Hershon, M. (1994). Half wheel hell & other cycling stories. Boulder, CO: Velonewsbooks.

Jackson, S., Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Flow in sports: the keys to optimal experiences and performances.
Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Jackson, S., Marsh, H. (1996). Development and validation of a scale to measure optimal experience: The flow
state scale. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 18, 17-35.

Masters, K. (1992). Hypnotic susceptibility, cognitive dissociation, and runner's high in a sample of marathon
runners. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 34, 193-201.

Murphy, M., White, R. (1995). In the zone: Trancendent experience in sports. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc.

Nideffer, R. (1992). Psyched to win. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Nye, P. (1988). Hearts of lions: The story of american bicycle racing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc.

Orlick, T. (1980). In pursuit of excellence: how to win in sport and life through mental training (2nd ed.). Champaign,
IL: Human Kinetics.

Sachs, M. & Buffone, G. (Ed.) (1984). Running as therapy: An integrated approach. Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press

Sheehan. G. (1978) Running and being: The total experience. New York: Simon and Schuster

Singer, R., Murphy, V., Tennant, K. (1993). Handbook of research on sport psychology. New York: MacMillan.

VeloNews (Ed.). (1997). Bicycle racing in the modern era: Twenty five years of cycling journalism/from the editors of
VeloNews. Boulder, CO: VeloPress.

VeloNews Editors (Ed.). (1998). The 1998 Tour De France: Conquests and crises. Boulder, CO: VeloPress.

Wilcockson, J. (1998). John Wilcockson's world of cycling. Boulder, CO: VeloPress.

Page 1
Building a High Performance Environment
-- Teamwork and Flow --
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has put forth a model for improving individual performance that blends Challenge with Skills
and helps us to frame a process for optimizing team performance. The ideas on individual performance are mostly from
his book, Finding Flow, published in 1997, which is finding a place in the thinking of people involved in performance
management and productivity. What I have tried to do herein is help frame some ideas for improving teamwork around
my 20+ years of working with
individuals, organizations and teams on optimizing performance. There are lots of workplace applications for this
thinking and you should find the ideas actionable.
The concept of Flow comes from Csikszentmihalyi’s interviews with people who described their experiences using the
metaphor of a river current carrying them along while their performance just seemed natural. Things just flowed.
Flow might be described as becoming absorbed in an activity and moving within the energy field to perform at a high
level. This resonates for many people since most can remember or relate to being in such a mental state, be it writing
an article or kayaking a river, where it all just seemed to happen.
One gets in “The Zone” and things just roll – this state might be described as fast or complete or perfect or seamless or
some such word. It is my belief that everyone can get in the flow and accomplish more that way.
Why Use It?
A high performance state is where individuals and teams operate most effectively – you know it when you see it or feel it
and if you have been there before, you find that intoxicating. If you have played my Lost Dutchman exercise, you may
have experienced flow toward the end of the planning period when everything comes together very rapidly – or not,
depending on how your team was working! <grin> Artists sometimes get in a state whereby nothing seems to distract
them and they produce at a high level. Pool players call it getting “in stroke” and find they can do everything perfectly
and seamlessly and they can often remember that state for years. Scientists and college professors are well-known for
their “absent mindedness,” often because they are so focused on
the task at hand that they are almost unaware of other responsibilities.
This Flow state is easily recognized in athletes who are in a “groove” or “zone” where they can’t miss a pitch or they
seem to be playing “unconsciously.” Think of Tiger Woods and a string of birdies (as opposed to Shaq on the free throw
line!). Flow might be the opposite of “choke” where there are so many competing thoughts and distractions that high
performance is unlikely or just not possible, as in the person who freezes in a public presentation situation.
A high performance state occurs when people are given clearly defined tasks that balance their skill level with the
challenge level of the task. It also helps in stretching skills and promoting individual and team development.
When the environment is challenging and the skills are sufficient,
performance can flow. A key, then, to improving workplace productivity is to effectively manage a high performance
environment, one that supports such positive mental states. There are also some other factors involved in creating such
a situation.
Csikszentmihalyi’s model is described below. It is based on an interaction of Challenges and Skills. Flow occurs in a
zone where there is some matching of the above; mismatching produces other less desired and predictable outcomes.
The diagram above demonstrates his concept that a matching of skill levels to challenge helps produce flow. Highly
skilled people will view some challenges as boring, where a low skilled person might find the same situation involving
and engaging. Consider an expert and a novice kayak paddler on a set of moderate rapids on a river. The expert coasts
through somewhat bored while the novice is white-knuckling his paddle the whole way! A high performance state occurs
when there is a matching of challenge and skill. If a teammate at work is in “way over his head” skill- wise, the likelihood
that they can contribute much to the team initiative is
low. More of a match of skills to the challenge is required.
Skills and Challenges are important, but environment counts.
The overall environment generally needs to be supportive to reinforce the positives and minimize the negatives.
In Frank Herbert’s novels (The Dune Trilogy), he had his heroes use a mantra that started, “Fear is the mind-killer…”
This corresponds to Marty Seligman’s research on Conditioned Helplessness. Fear is an inhibitor or even a stopper;
fear is not a motivator for optimal performance. While some level of fear may produce the hormonal response of, “Fight
or Flight” and
be a precursor for rapid action and that adrenaline rush, people do not operate well in a situation dominated by stress.
Generally, fear causes freezing. And more often, a sense of control (personal and team) is needed for flow and
performance.
Not everything in the environment needs to be perfect for flow to be experienced. The right challenge matching with the
right skills may just merge for certain individuals at some moment in time. While most might find 90,000 cheering people
and international TV to be “somewhat distracting,” Bob Beamon was able to long jump nearly 3 feet farther than the
previous world record of 26 feet at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, an outstanding accomplishment in an environment
that had many distractions including the Black Power protests, 90,000 cheering people in
the stands, and intrusive videocameras telecasting to millions of worldwide viewers. But he managed this and produced
a response that could only be called in the Zone. (link).
When in the flow state, people become absorbed in their activity, and the focus of awareness is narrowed down to the
activity itself. When in a situation of flow, people often feel a loss of self-consciousness and perceive a merging of action
and awareness along with a corresponding decrease in environmental distractions. Distractions may be there, but they
are less noticeable and of low impact. Many will describe a distorted sense of time - one's subjective experience of time
is altered, generally slowed
down so that more seems to be getting done in less time.
Then again, there is the old joke about the snail and the slug. It seems the snail is visiting the slug in the hospital. There
was apparently an accident and the slug is now recuperating. The snail asks, “Well, how did all this happen?” and the
slug responds, “You know, I really don’t remember much; It all happened so fast!”
Speed is a relative thing, you know… Those in the zone can get a lot done in a short period of time. Proactively
managing the environment to maximize support and minimize distractions generally makes it more likely.
How does one structure the environment to generate flow?
The key is to set up an environment that helps to engage people and drive such a state of thinking and behaving. The
components of a team-based, workplace environment design might have many or most of these components:
Clear goals, missions and purpose, where expectations are specific and processes and procedures are understood.
Goals need to be perceived as achievable and the individuals must feel they possess adequate skills and abilities. The
involvement of the team in the situation can also support flow.
Concentration and focus with a narrow field of view. Flow is more likely to occur if focus is on a narrow band of
things rather than a broad one.
Think of Bob Beamon’s thoughts on that record long jump in the 1968 Olympics. Avoiding distractions and disruptions is
very helpful, although sometimes difficult to arrange and influenced by personal concentration skills.
A focus on success, rather than avoidance of failure is important for most individuals. While some may employ a fear-
of-failure strategy as a motivational force, it is generally not something that will drive peak performance. Having a focus
on achieving success and meeting goals is much more rewarding than avoiding failure or lack of success. Intrinsic
rewards support sustained performance much more than any added extrinsic rewards might generate. Achieving the
goal and generating immediate positive feedback are powerful motivators and help sustain flow.
Balance between ability levels and challenges presented for the team (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult)
is a key factor and something that managers and key leaders must attend to for best results.
Engagement within the activity itself is important, especially when it is a group or team situation where there may have
been some past negativity surrounding this activity. Sharing risk can help minimize distractions and contribute to the
feeling of support. Organizations DO have histories, as do individuals.

Most of us find it hard to imagine bestselling authors struggling with their manuscripts or suffering from writers’ block.
Instead we assume they have something special we have to find or develop, and we search in vain for the magical
formula.

In reality, that wonderful state in which the words just flow from our fingers is caused by certain kinds of brain
activation--which means there’s nothing mystical about it. You can still enjoy the euphoria of being in that state, but
better understanding what’s happening while you’re there--or while you’re having trouble getting there--can help you
increase your ability to get there at will.

Mihaly Csikszentmiihalyi

Coined by a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced ME-high CHICK-sent-me-high), the term "flow"
refers to that perfect creative state. Sometimes it feels like someone (the "muse") is whispering in your ear, or like you're
channeling someone or something else, or even that you're just writing down "what's really happening" in your fictional
world. Some writers have even returned to their desks to find wonderful material in their own handwriting that they have
no memory of producing.

"Flow" is actually a way of referring to creative dissociation, and dissociation is a natural phenomenon in which some
parts of the brain disengage or "split" away from others. It's what happens when you don't remember your drive
somewhere because you've been thinking about someone else, or you miss out on part of a conversation because
you're daydreaming, or time flies by because you're enjoying a book or movie.

The Experience of Flow

Flow is always a positive experience; in fact, some people refer to it as "optimal experience." And flow doesn't just
happen for writers--athletes call it being "in the zone." Chess players, surgeons, dancers, programmers, and others also
experience flow when they're completely focused on doing the thing they love.

Though everybody's experience is a little different, there are certain things many people report, including:
* Distortions in the experience of time - You realize that you've been writing for three hours when it felt like one.
* Euphoria
* A feeling of calm competence or enhanced creativity
* A "softening in the boundaries of the self," or a sense of wholeness or spiritual unity
* Another mystical experience of some kind (basketball players, for example, will sometimes say that the hoop seems
bigger when they're in flow)

Finding "the Zone"

Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as that perfect balance between challenge (task difficulty) and ability (personal skills).

This means that if a task is significantly beyond your ability, you will feel anxiety. For example, let's say you're computer
illiterate and you need to install a new PC card (circuit board) in your computer. A friend is talking you through the
process on the phone, but since you've never even seen the inside of a computer before, you're afraid you're either
going to electrocute yourself or fry an expensive piece of equipment. You're probably very anxious.

If the task is well within your ability but presents little challenge, by contrast, you're bored.
Washing the dishes is tedious because it's so easy and repetitive that you could probably do it with your eyes closed if
you had to.

If the task is a challenge to your skills and you're interested in conquering that challenge, you are on the right path to
achieving flow.

Ok, Great...Now How do I Achieve Flow?

First, the bad news. According to Csikszentmihalyi, "You can't make flow happen. All you can do is learn to remove
obstacles in its way."

If you're a good typist and can type without looking at the keyboard, you know that as long as you don't think about what
your fingers are doing, you're fine. As soon as you start thinking about how fast you're hitting the keys, you start to make
mistakes. The same thing happens to athletes who are asked to explain how they do something so well: if they try to
demonstrate immediately afterward, they have more trouble than usual because now they're analyzing their movements
rather than just doing them.

The good news: Once you know what flow is and what it feels like, you can start to pay attention to how you got there
and increase your ability to do it on purpose.

The Right-Brain/Left-Brain Myth

Neurologist Alice Flaherty argues that creativity is due to a balance of frontal and temporal lobe activity. In other words
the trick is not, in fact, to get out of your "left brain" and into your right, but to increase activity in the right hemisphere (or
reduce activity in the left) so it matches the activity on the other side.

Most people don't realize that if you really got all the way out of your left brain, you wouldn't be able to write--the left
brain produces language, and in many people the right brain is completely nonverbal. (That is, if we severed that single
connection between your right and left hemispheres, the corpus callosum, and asked the hand controlled by the
nonverbal side of your brain to write words, it either wouldn't be able to, or it could only write extremely simple,
extremely familiar words, like your name.)

Brain Lateralization

Both sides of your brain work together at all times, but as your brain developed when you were a child, it lateralized
functions. In other words, it placed the control centers for some functions on the right side, and the control centers for
others on the left. People's brains are organized in similar ways, so we can point to a diagram like the one to the right
and say with relative certainty that your brain is organized this way, too.

Musicians use the left lobe to listen to music, and non-musicians use the right--that's a good example of how experience
can change brain organization. Musicians can hear and identify the logical parts to music; others usually just listen for
enjoyment.

Broca's area is a specialized part of the brain in the left frontal lobe responsible for language and speech production.
Sometimes, after a stroke, patients cannot speak until they've worked with a speech therapist. That's because Broca's
area was affected by the stroke.

Wernicke's area is a specialized part of the brain in the left temporal (side) lobe responsible for language
comprehension.

The Critic and the Muse Don't Get Along

Unfortunately, the left frontal part of the brain is also responsible for that little voice that's trying to edit while you write,
and creative drive is actually much more strongly correlated with good creative output than skill.

In other words, if your brain functions normally (i.e. you don't have a tumor), you have the desire to write creatively, and
you can shut up that little critical voice, you've got all you need to achieve flow and produce good stuff. (You can get the
critic back out when you actually edit, but wait till then!)

So ignore that critical voice until later, because while you may not produce bad work while it's around, you can't write
good stuff, either, if you're not writing at all.

Increasing the Flow in Your Life

The parts of the brain that are affected by the flow experience are also active during meditation and, for many, religious
experiences. But you don’t have to take up yoga to be more creative. What you need to do is pay attention any time you
realize you have been in a flow state. Different things work for different people, but here are some approaches you can
try.

1. If there’s a TV show, movie, or book that you love so much that the rest of the world disappears for you while you’re
involved with it, think about what it is about the show that intrigues you so much. Write about the characters, themes, or
ideas that keep you riveted. Try to incorporate some of them into your own writing, because they activate that part of the
brain you want involved--they’re the kinds of things that will bring flow to your writing.

2. Write what you think is garbage. Seriously. Write the worst stuff you can come up with. In fact, set a goal to write
things you’ve never let yourself write before. Write the most self-important Mary Sue story every to hit the internet (you
don’t have to post it!) Write that love scene that’s so embarrassingly titillating that you’d have to leave town if anyone
you know ever saw it. Write about what you’d do if you could say anything you wanted to to your coworkers, boss, or
clients. If you don’t feel comfortable writing or keeping these things in your home, get a safe deposit box at the bank and
keep them there. Safe deposit boxes are surprisingly affordable, often only $20 or $30 a year for small boxes. You could
also get a Post Office box and mail yourself your finished pieces. Don’t destroy them, though. Some of the best stuff
you’ll ever write is the stuff that disturbs you the most.

3. Set aside time that won’t be interrupted by distractions. You can’t achieve flow when the phone keeps ringing, or your
partner keeps asking when you’re going to fix dinner, or you’re worrying about whether that work project is done yet.
Make that time sacred. Some people advocate sitting in front of the screen or writing tablet throughout that time, even if
you don’t write a word, but if you find that tortuous, you won’t do it. So keep other things around you will enjoy doing if
you’re not overcome by inspiration.

Think silly, because flow is a playful kind of state, and grimness isn’t going to get you anywhere. Don’t bring in work, or
bills, or try to catch up on your emails. Many people find flow in quiet, repetitive tasks they enjoy: knitting, beading,
drawing (even if you're really bad at it), or playing the piano, or even organizing things--photographs, for example.

If you can’t or don’t want to do any of those things, think about what you enjoyed doing before you had so many
responsibilities. Buy a few of those comic books you never buy anymore--do they help you get into the flow state?
Download some pictures to color from the internet and borrow some of your child’s Crayolas. (Better yet, get some for
yourself. A big box with lots of colors!) Play Dominos. Plant flowers. Do something that’s a guilty pleasure, something
you deprive yourself of far too often. These are the things that will help you find flow most easily.

4. Every time you find yourself in flow, spend a few minutes thinking about how it feels, and how you got there. And
then, whatever it was, do it again. Soon.

Antonio R. Damasiois the Van Allen Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa
Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego. DESCARTES' ERROR was nominated for
the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and has been translated into twenty-three languages. His most recent book, THE
FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS, was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Book
of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has eighteen foreign editions. He lives in Iowa City and
Chicago.

Interview

Q: Much of the work you have done in the lab and with your previous books explored the role that emotions
play in decision-making and in the construction of the self. In your new book, LOOKING FOR SPINOZA you
seem to be presenting a progress report on our understanding of the nature and significance of feelings. What
is new here? What have you found out?
A: Neuroscience is advancing at a fast pace. As of four years ago, when my last book was published, we had a
reasonable hypothesis regarding the brain basis for feeling, but no certainties. Now, we can speak with confidence
about "what feelings are" - where they come from, how they happen, what they are made of biologically. That is why the
book's subtitle is the "feeling brain." We have identified brain areas and brain pathways necessary to feel emotions.
Armed with the new knowledge we can even venture to say what feelings are for. The new knowledge broadens our
view of human nature. We can not really know who we are if we do not understand the brain mechanisms behind
emotion and feeling - what causes emotions, what leads to feelings, how they affect our decisions, social behavior, and
creativity, and where they fit in evolution.

Q: What value does understanding the difference between emotions and feelings have?
A: Understanding the difference between emotions and feelings removed a barrier to research on the nature of affect,
and opened the way to elucidating the origin and content of feelings.

Q: Are there neurobiological foundations for Ethics?

A: Yes there are. One of the payoffs of the new understanding of emotions and feelings is the realization that moral
behavior does not begin with humans. In certain circumstances numerous non-human species behave in ways that are,
for all intents and purposes, comparable to the moral ways of human beings. Interestingly, the moral behaviors are
emotional -compassion, shame, indignation, dominant pride or submission. As in the case of culture, the contribution of
everything that is learned and created in a group plays a major role in shaping moral behaviors. Only humans can codify
and refine rules of moral behavior. Animals can behave in moral-like ways, but only humans have ethics and write laws
and design justice systems. Animals can show attachment to others but as I discuss in the book only humans love in the
proper sense of the term.

Q: Why bring Spinoza in to this?

A: Because Spinoza prefigured in a remarkable way some of the ideas on emotion, feelings, and ethics that are now
taking shape as a result of modern neuroscience (Spinoza's views on the mind body problem are especially modern).
Also because Spinoza's uncanny foreshadowing of modern views on biology and mind have not been recognized by
contemporary science and deserve to be so. Finally, as I studied Spinoza with the purpose of giving him his due, I
became intrigued by the person and the times, and both found their way into the book.

Q: Are there any case studies that illuminate your argument?

A: There are many such cases. For example, children who suffer brain injury in certain regions of the frontal lobe in their
first year years of life develop major defects of social behavior in spite of being otherwise intelligent. They do not exhibit
social emotions (compassion, shame, guilt) and they never learn social conventions and ethical rules.

Q: Is it possible to locate the spiritual in the human organism?

A: It is indeed. The spiritual is a special feeling state and, as other feelings states, it can be traced to the particular
operations of several brain and body regions. We might say that the spiritual is the ultimate state of well-being—there is
a maximal ease, harmony, and balance of organism functions. Spiritual states are most conducive to survival.

Q: People who have read Looking for Spinoza were surprised to find it hopeful. Do you think it is hopeful?
A: The book does have a message of hope. This may be unexpected, given the bleakness of today's headlines, but I
believe it is justified. The message emerges naturally from several sources. For example, I am suggesting that knowing
about the workings of mind and brain can help us deal more effectively with the social problems we face today. Part of
our failures in the past may well be due to underestimating the positive and negative power of emotions. On a purely
practical level, the new knowledge will also let us develop new medications to cure causes of human suffering such as
pain and depression. No less importantly, perhaps, the book shows how Spinoza, alone and marginalized, was able to
achieve happiness by cultivating curiosity, knowledge, and goodness of character.