141. Getting into Your Zone

Pick our metaphor to make your life a little easier and more enjoyable. Getting into your zone is the key to living your purpose with clarity, intention, and creativity.

Transcript

141. Getting into Your Zone

 Today we are talking about flow and I mean tapping into the flow of the moment, finding the current of your life. You can imagine yourself as an underwater creature approaching the Australian current, and it is a rapidly flowing underwater current. In sea. Creatures are able to use these currents to get themselves farther and faster than they ever would have just swimming along. You're likely right now recalling Finding Nemo, and how so many of the sea creatures utilize that Australian current to travel a long distance with less effort. They moved into the current and the water pressure moved them at a rapid clip to their destination. Imagine you're a sailor and sailors use wind currents to move their boats. If you like to ski, you can consider how skiers use pre-existing paths to carve down a mountain with much more ease. And over time, each of us finds ways to use currents to make our life more meaningful and take value based actions. Now, sometimes these happen on purpose, and sometimes we accidentally fall into a current that is taking us in the opposite direction that we want to go. How does this happen? Now our brains love an efficient strategy, and thank goodness for that, because imagine if you had to learn each and every time what a chair was, instead of being able to sit in a chair. When we go visit a friend, we would have to learn each time that this object is in fact a chair, and it can be used in a very particular way to sit on, similar to a chair that you might have at home. And the process of being unable to extrapolate information would be so inefficient for our brains, we would waste time and we would absolutely create some awkward social situations. While striving for efficiency, our brains create many shortcuts or currents that create difficulties for us. For example, someone who experienced an accident might associate driving with extreme danger. Now the brain is trying to be efficient. It's creating an association between the aspect of a car accident and regular occurrences like just driving with safety. And the association can cause us to become fearful. In extreme cases, someone might develop PTSD. They might decide that they will no longer drive. Now the brain is trying to be efficient, but it's quite harmful to the person. And while the brain creates these many, many unhelpful associations, the good news is that you can create helpful associations and you're not stuck with these unhelpful currents. There are many currents that you can travel with. So in addition to using thought strategies like diffusion, we can learn to take perspective on our lives and to step into these really helpful currents and release these unhelpful associations. The diffusion is a thought technique in acceptance and commitment therapy, and it's discovering that your thoughts are in just not facts. They are a biological process. And if you're sitting there thinking about polar bears and there's no polar bears, we can start to understand. The fact is, polar bears exist, but not right now. I'm just thinking about them. And then you can extrapolate that example into any thought we think is not a fact. It's a biological process. And once we discover that this is true, we can identify the currents that we're swimming in, the thoughts that are taking us the wrong direction. Now, recall a time when you were completely absorbed in what you were doing, maybe laughing with your best friend. It's one of my favorite things to do. Maybe you were enthralled in a book, or a film or immersed in your work. And that's when time seems to stand still and fly at the same time, and you're in this focused state of mind without distraction. Perhaps you've been in the zone at work. You know, I waited tables a lot to support myself while in college. It's how I saved money to take my first trip to Paris. And as servers, we all talked about being in the zone, and it was the perfect working state where we could manage many tables with ease. And when we were in the zone, our internal experience of time was heightened. And somehow, when we're in the zone, we moved efficiently and seemingly without thought. We perfectly paced the timing of handing in a check to the kitchen and in the zone. Customers got their appetizers before the salad and then the main course came later. There was no bunching up. Everything flowed. The system worked great when we were in the zone. Now, if you've waited tables, you also know the opposite of being in the zone and it is being in the weeds. Now, this really undesirable state would happen when we seemed unable to access the zone, or we felt crushed by the number and timing of tasks necessary to take care of our customers. There'd be new tables all at once, for example. Moving in the zone. We did not exhaust ourselves and for sure we earned more tips. In the weeds, we felt emotionally drained by the end of our shift, and lower tip earnings definitely reflected if we were in the weeds. The term flow was coined by the Hungarian researcher Miha Nitec Mihai, and his work has expanded it into real support for how we can get into the flow. It's not just something that happens to us. It occurs when conditions are right, when the container is optimal, so to speak. When we are engaged in a task that is challenging. But not too difficult. It's not impossible for us or outside of our expertise that we couldn't possibly achieve at the higher level. And putting yourself in containers where flow is possible means that we have to challenge ourselves. Be uncomfortable trying new art techniques, taking an art class, engaging with people who are maybe at a higher level than you. You will learn so much more about tennis. If you play tennis with someone who's at a higher skill level than if you play with someone at your exact level. So flow is like that. There's a bit of a challenge and the environment is conducive to intense focus. As you contemplate getting into the zone and engaging in containers where flow is more likely to happen. Imagine what could be possible for you. Like the current moving farther and faster than any of those sea creatures could without the current. A container gives you that sense of blocking off time for yourself. That's a container. Putting yourself in a group of other women who are moving in the same direction. That's a container. If you're being truly honest with yourself, you can identify some areas where you need to engage in a different container so that you can experience being in the zone where your work and your creativity flows without so much struggle and without so much effort. Stepping into that courage and moving in a way that allows you the courage to try something that's a little harder than what you're capable of. Now a container with someone who can support you provides what psychologists call scaffolding. And it comes originally from working with students, where people would scaffold what the child could do. By providing structure like a scaffolding of the building, they would provide a little extra structure. And then they found that children could perform much farther than they would have without scaffolding, much farther than the child thought or the teacher imagined that they could accomplish in a session. So it's not cheating to have scaffolding, to have an art therapist, a coach, a community, a retreat, a container that allows you to have the scaffolding you need so that you can go farther and faster. So now that you know about flow scaffolding, getting in the zone and the Australian current, challenge yourself to do something that you've been putting off or you've been ignoring, and step into a space with women who can encourage you and push you. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode. If you'd like to connect further, you can find me on Instagram @DrAmyBackos or online at www.ModernCreativeWoman.com.