That fleeting moment of perfection!
- Inspirations - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Steven
- Oct 30, 2016
- 2 min read
In Taoism there is a sensation they call 'Wu Wei', roughly translating as 'Effortless Actions'. In ancient Greece the same thing was know within artistic circles as the presence of a Muse, in Jazz they refer to it as 'being in the Pocket', athletes would say being in 'The Zone' and comedians name it 'the Forever Box'. But in western psychology they simply call it - Flow.
🔹
I know you have felt it too.
That feeling as the thrill of the moment completely engulfs your attention and the rest of the world seems to fade away into the background.
It can happen in sport, in conversation, in art or music. The activity doesn't really matter, focus is the only key component. Focus so sharp that it cuts time itself, slicing away past and future, making it dilate into a single infinite moment where nothing exists but for you and your task at hand. You feel intuitively and with perfect lucidity exactly what your next move should be and everything seems to come easily, effortlessly.
It is that Felix Felicis feeling as the world seems to pulse to the rhythm of your step and everything is going just right.
Steven Kotler is the author of a beautiful book titled The Rise of Superman where he studies high preforming extreme sports athletes to learn how to bring this illusive state into our everyday life. In another study at McKinsey institute they found that CEO's in flow preform five times better than out of flow. That is a 500% increase of productivity!
Imagine how such an superpower would affect your daily life.
Because Flow is a built in function of our biology - and Biology is Hackable!
In the next few weeks I will dive into how!
If you are still curious I recommend that you check out the Flow Genome Projects website,
they have near endless articles and videos on the subject and you can take their profiling test to determine how you will easiest reach your flowstate.
You'll find a link to the test right here;
Comments