E33 | How To Cultivate More Flow in Your Work Day #Thriving Thursday

Do you feel scattered? Does your work day feel like a crazy train that can't slow down? Maybe you're desperately in need of some focus time?

This week on GETTING TO UNSTUCK we are talking about how to work and lead from a place of flow.

Whether you're struggling with procrastination, feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list, or simply seeking more joy in your daily work, this episode will provide you with the tools and techniques to cultivate a more flow-filled workday.

Discover the secrets to structuring your day in a way that not only enhances efficiency but also brings joy and fulfillment to each task you undertake.

PLUS, stay with us until the end for a 2 minute re-set exercise for focus!

 Getting to Unstuck is a live podcast with Christal Duncan, Colin Kingsmill, and Carol Vickers from Whole Human Coaching. Find out more about us and take our FREE Whole Human Wheel of Life Assessment at https://wholehumancoaching.com

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Transcript

Carol Vickers: [00:00:00] Okay, now we really are live. Good morning. Good afternoon. Hi again. 

Christal Duncan: Welcome to Getting to Unstuck. So we were, I thought we were live once. We weren't apparently, but I was right into it. So I'm going to, I'm going to come back and conjure up what I just finished talking about to no one.

Bye. Welcome to episode 33 of getting unstuck where today is thriving Thursday. So in just a couple of minutes, we're going to be talking about how to cultivate more flow in your workday. So we're going to [00:01:00] be looking at some practical tips for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and. We're going to be talking about people who are managers, bosses, people that are just, you have a project and you need to sit your butt in a chair and you need to get it done.

We're going to help you understand how you can get that done with more flow and enjoy it. Before we get into that, I would like to just share a couple of things that are coming up. One is next week we have, Another which is becoming our monthly free workshop where we invite people in to understanding how to use coaching conversations in leadership and we give people a little taste of what it's like to get some coach training and practical ways that you can use it in your leadership.

So if you're interested in taking that free workshop, it's very useful. We promise that you will leave with tools in hand to start to implement it right away. Thank you for joining. You can find out more of our whole human coaching. com, but we are long it. That one is next. It's going to be on [00:02:00] April 24th at 12 Stan 12 Pacific one.

Mountain three, Eastern four, Atlantic. And if you're on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I'm not sure the conversions, but we hope you'll join us. And we also have at some exciting training that's coming up. We have a new course coming up called Reclaimed Leadership and you're going to be hearing more about that and what's available for it.

We we work all the time with leaders. In all kinds of and all kinds of situations in all kinds of organizations and leadership positions around the world And we are really excited about our new reclaiming leadership course and we're going to be talking more about that later but for now Let's get into how 

Colin Kingsmill: Do you know what I was thinking?

Sorry to interrupt but I was thinking, you know, some people might not know what it means to [00:03:00] have a coaching conversation You Oh, you know, so I wonder I wonder if we need just to kind of sprinkle a little bit of thought on like next week's workshop, right? Like what does that mean? You know like like, For me, it's about being Less reactive.

It's about being more proactive. It's about this idea of Appreciative inquiry. It's about it's about coming to a situation With less baggage If that makes sense, you know, coming to an intersection where there might be some conflict, there might be some challenges, there might be some high blood pressure, there might be some reactivity.

And the idea, the idea of what we're, what we're going to offer next week is coming into that space much cleaner. And and getting to a destination You know, it's a little bit like an operating room because I don't know I was in one on monday So i'm thinking about it like you come into that space [00:04:00] and it's clean and neat and tidy And you can have a much more productive conversation And and hopefully get a much more productive outcome about it.

So I just, sorry, I, I, I, I only thought about that as, as you were, as you were mentioning, I'm like, no, maybe we need to tell people a little bit more about that. That's what it's for. 

Carol Vickers: It really is. And the interesting thing is that coaching conversations can look in so many different ways. I was just reviewing for a student of mine, their, a recording they had sent me and they, in their coaching session, provided very little interaction.

It was just some really well placed questions that dropped, as my colleague Lily says, like a pebble in a pool. The question dropped in and the thought process just went out, out, out, rippled out. Really lovely to see. So, A coaching session looks how you need it to be, which is the beautiful aspect of it.

You get what you need from a coaching conversation. [00:05:00] 

Colin Kingsmill: Yeah, exactly. So, sorry, I interrupted the flow. This is really good. Thank you for this 

Christal Duncan: because this does lead us into what we're going to be talking about. Because There are anyone can be a coach. Anyone can learn how to use coaching conversations.

So I know that a lot of people can have different ideas around what coaching is, but at, at the core coaching conversation is about co creating something. It's about leaving. It's about entering into conversation understanding that the person that we're talking to already is a whole human. And that, that That we're working together, we're on the same team uncovering what they, what they want, the answers that they're looking for, the questions that they're coming to that conversation with.

So, oh, sorry, Carol, were you going to say something? 

Carol Vickers: Well, no, it just makes sense that this, what happens in a coaching conversation when we observe it and it's moving just the way we want it to as the coaches is that our [00:06:00] clients experience its flow. 

Christal Duncan: Exactly. Exactly. They do experience flow. So here's a couple things when we're and the reason that we have been thinking about this is because we find that often when you enter into a conversation, I mean, for us as coaches, we, let's say we enter into a conversation with someone and they could just be hanging up the phone from something that was like, In crisis or whatever.

And so we take a minute with them to help them get centered, but that's because We're the coach in that conversation because we understand how to use those tools and offer them to someone else and because we're sitting outside of the story that they're attached to, but getting into a state of flow and, and connecting with that, that part of you that is calm and ready.

To either get the work done or get things through to the other side, complete a project, [00:07:00] whatever, whatever that challenge is is not something that's always accessible to people, whether it's outside of them, it's their environment that they're working in or whether there's internal conversations. I mean, it could be, it's always a different situation.

So what can we Colin, you've been researching some things around the challenges around When people feel like they're not in able to maybe maybe access flow in their work. 

Colin Kingsmill: Yeah. Yeah. And you know what, they're, they're kind of the usual suspects, right? It's feeling distracted, feeling overwhelmed.

Feeling unfocused, feeling a little bit sort of scatterbrained there. And, and those tend to amplify things like anxiety or, or, or depression, but also reactivity really plays into this because your, your fuse is so short in those moments of being out of flow that you begin to react and you begin to , really respond [00:08:00] with with, you know, it's kind of anger and other other emotions that don't necessarily add any value to the conversation.

So that's how really that's how it manifests in. And then, of course, we blend into how that creates anxiety within teams and and toxicity ultimately in the end. 

Carol Vickers: Yes. Yeah. It's a good indicator though, you're not in flow is when you get sharp and you, and you get, you know agitated or you respond in a way that is not your chosen way of being.

All of those are real good indications that you are not in a state of flow because it's really well described, but it's relatively new. So the state of flow, I think anyone who has done art or dance or some creative expression understands what that means. But it was described, first of all, by a positive psychologist back in 2004, and his name is Mihai [00:09:00] Csikszentmihalyi, a very long name, which I'm happy to put into the resources, but I had to look up how to pronounce it.

But he, he was the first who really described it. And he was saying that it is a state, and I'm quoting him here, a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost just for the sheer sake of doing it.

We know that we experience this sometimes. Time vanishes. We forget to get up and go to the bathroom. We are just so into our what's happening for us that it is so pleasurable and delightful. But it doesn't have to be exactly. Like the ultimate experience, Colin, you mentioned it. It could happen when you're doing the dishes.

Colin Kingsmill: Oh yeah, [00:10:00] absolutely. I think flow, I think we, I think we sometimes believe the things like mindfulness and flow and meditation are these lofty ideas, right? That are so hard to attain. And there's. Distance between where you are today and where you need to get to. And you have to read all these books and do all the study, but actually you don't, it's attainable and it's yours.

You already have it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's already in you. It's just a question of, of, of shining the light on that and, and really kind of focusing on it. 

Christal Duncan: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's also important to think about the fact that we, we often think we don't have something because we're not familiar with it.

So we're, if we're, if our work day is based on crisis after crisis and, or and, or there's our, the, our workload is overwhelming, or it's just, we feel like our, our a big part of it is our focus is so can become so dissipated that [00:11:00] we just feel it's the word I would use is scattered. And I am very familiar with what scattered feels like.

I know when I feel out of my depth, when I feel like there's too many things that are vying for space in my head there's competing interests you're having, you know, you, you know, that you're scattered. If you're trying to do something, But your mind is somewhere else, or if you've ever had that sense of for me, one of the, the ways is when I have to get into details of something, I need to be able to give myself some space to settle into the details because if I don't, I can read something over and over and over again and it doesn't sink in.

Right. So that, that, that distracted that sense of complete distraction and of how we've also thought that the. That work has to be difficult all the time, like that, that we, it doesn't for us to be a leader. Somehow we believe that there has to be a sense of sacrifice and grind all the time. And that we're always almost [00:12:00] at odds with ourselves.

And that's not. First of all, that's not a sustainable way to live and work. And that's, that's not where the energy is ultimately going to be, no matter what we're doing for work, no matter where, where we are. So Carol, tell us some, some, some of the things that you've observed and learned. 

Carol Vickers: There's a way that it can be triggered in no matter what we're doing.

And when we look at it scientifically, it's a balance. It's really the balance between something that is very difficult and something that that we know that we can perform. So there's a sweet spot in there. So what you're saying, Crystal, is when you're in that scattered space, we're not able to determine to get into the rhythm of something because once we hit that sweet spot, once we're in that space of, and it happens when we're doing the dishes and that's not a difficult task, but there's a flow to it when we are balanced by doing something that can be satisfying and.

Just the, [00:13:00] there's no frustration in it, it just is a, there's a sweet spot of moving through it. So flow arises when we look at it in the brain, an interaction between positive emotions. Oh, I can do this. This is good. I'm moving. And the high attention focus. So it's when we're using our prefrontal cortex.

So it's in the very front of our brain. And that's the activated spot. That's what we can see when they have taken brain scans of Dominican monks and, and Himalayan climbers and people who are in a straight, in a very concentrated space. We can see that these cognitive skills of attention and planning and goal maintenance and all of that can, it's in a reward place in our brain.

It, these are all functions of our prefrontal cortex. So it's in finding that space, which is a task that you need to get done and finding some [00:14:00] ability with it. It's like, Oh, I'm, I'm good at this. When we, I don't know, for me, it was like when I looked at spreadsheets, like, Oh my God, I'll never learn Excel.

But I found a place where I've actually got some ability now and I can get into a space of Being in flow with how it's moving and how I'm able to get it There's those little moments of satisfaction like ooh that formula worked. Yay Yeah, and so these are small things that we do that we can pick up during the day In the midst of all the rest of the chaos that's going on.

Christal Duncan: Yeah. I think also that's even why people find people will often have brilliant insights in the shower or I'm, I'm a runner and I find I can find a state of flow sometimes when I'm, when I'm running and you just feel yourself, I feel myself settle into it and just it feels very, Like my brain can just kind [00:15:00] of relax and just become very present to that, what the experience of being in my body and all those things.

What about the challenges of when someone is working in an office that is either an open concept AKA an invitation for Endless interruptions all day long, they're either they're in an office where there's an open concept or there's just a lot of demands where they, it's not as easy. Maybe they don't have as much autonomy in their schedule.

How would we, how, what would we, you know, how would we approach that? What would be our, your thoughts there?

Carol Vickers: It is a matter, and this sounds again a bit lofty, but I think it happens in small increments of self discipline in finding resources that you can use in those circumstances, whether it's a breathing exercise or whether it is, can you use headphones in, in that kind of [00:16:00] environment? What might you be listening to?

That would give you that, 

Christal Duncan: that 

Carol Vickers: pause, that brief moment, and you stand up and go for a walk. What can you do to alter your body in that moment to take the breath? Because if you find yourself agitated or short or sharp, that short fuse, what helps to diffuse it? Mm hmm. What do you recommend, Colin? 

Colin Kingsmill: Well what I often say to people that I'm working with is find some kind of reminder that you could put on your screen or put on in front of you that and it doesn't have to be anything.

I mean, I have a little lighthouse in front of me right now, right? That that is just a simple reminder to stop mhm. Rethink your goals, make sure your workspace is clean, make sure it's flow friendly, you know, have, have, like you said, those kind of regularly [00:17:00] scheduled breaks and yeah, that's, that, that's really it.

I think we, I think we all get, can get so caught up in the screen and in the emails and in the do this next that you, you, you would benefit yourself by having some kind of reminder around you to stop, take the break. Get up, take two minutes, go and meditate, go and think there's also things that you can think about in terms of little, other little rituals, jumping onto some grass thinking, thinking about, about, about meditation, even for two minutes by yourself, go to the bathroom, close your eyes, you know Yes, not go to the bathroom and close your eyes, go into a room and close your eyes, right?

Try and think of, try and think of what are the distractions that are getting you away from the flow, right? And that could be, that could be having, you know, 25 windows on your screen open. I've got three open right now. So, so, but, but it's that [00:18:00] kind of That kind of awareness. And then I think multitasking is also the devil that we have gotten to deal with, right?

This idea that we can multitask and this, I think there's a lot of research out there now that multitasking does not work. You actually accomplish much less. So, 

It is, it, it, it really is a mess. And then, you know, what's the culture, what is the culture in the organization that is. Allowing you to be in flow or interrupting it.

And, and what are the sort of, what are the sort of peaceful mechanisms that you need to or you would like to introduce into the, into the organization if you're a leader? 

Carol Vickers: Yeah. Having that conversation with your colleagues is really important. Yes. Yeah. I 

Christal Duncan: think so. And I think also it, it does a couple of things.

It gives other people permission to be like, yeah, actually that's, I would, I would benefit from that too. So it, it, yeah. It creates a sense of solidarity [00:19:00] around making sure that this is a respectful place where people can have a space to have flow beyond that. And in addition to that, one of the things that I have found is I I've, I've used for a long time, like science backed music, so different kinds of music sometimes, and it's not, or sounds, this sounds crazy, but like, do you know, one of the things that they say that is.

The best way for your brain to be able to relax and settle into something is through bird song listening to birds Like literally so I have birdsong. I have birdsong channels. I'm not a bird watcher, but I'm a bird listener I sometimes will do that if I'm if I need to like allow myself to sink into a Something the other thing I use is something called 40 Hertz Which you can find just by googling it And, but you do it with headphones and it's kind of dissonant sounds and it feel, it can feel weird for a second when you do it.

But if you allow it to just for like those 30 seconds or [00:20:00] 60 seconds, it allows your brain to just be like, Oh, okay. I, it literally like closes off the distractions and helps you. So if I have a project that is time sensitive or, or just, I want to get some work done. I set a timer and sometimes I will just.

Put on the 40 Hertz and set a 25 minute timer and, and do that. 

Colin Kingsmill: Yup. I do that a lot 

Carol Vickers: too. You also spoke of, of meditation, but one of the, you know, as we all have a, a reaction to that word, but is centering just breathing and having a centering. for yourself, a ritual, an exercise that you do is so really valuable.

If you, if we 

Christal Duncan: have time, do we have time that we could, we have time. Yes. And my apologies for not to tell anybody this at the top of, I meant to remind people, but yes, let's, let's give let's give our listeners a tool right now that they can use on themselves [00:21:00] anytime they need to get themselves centered and, and go into some flow.

Carol Vickers: Okay. So, this is my invitation. Now, if you're driving, please do not do this, because I'm going to invite you to close your eyes. So, my invitation is to ground yourself wherever you are, and if possible, and if it feels comfortable to close your eyes, or just lower your gaze, so you are not distracted.

Invite you, again, if it works for you, just to take a deep breath in

and out.

First, bring awareness to what is going on in your head. What is happening? in your thoughts. Are you currently feeling scattered? Are you thinking about what is [00:22:00] next? Don't judge what you're thinking. Just notice. Next, bring some awareness to what's going on in your body. How are you feeling? Is it heavy? Is it light?

Are there some areas of tension? Is there some discomfort that you're aware of? Again, no need to judge it or to fix it, just for a breath or two, pay attention to your body.

Finally, an invitation to bring awareness to what's going on in your emotions. How are you feeling? What emotions are surfacing? Are there, is there stress? [00:23:00] Is there some overwhelm? Are you excited? Just remember, no judgment. Pay attention to how you're feeling in this moment.

Finally, let's take a few more deep breaths. Nice breath in

and out. Another

breath in.

And now releasing even further final breath in and out.

Remember in this moment at this time you are safe, you are supported, and you are [00:24:00] loved. When you are ready, bring your attention back, open your eyes, and join us.

Christal Duncan: Works every time.

For that, Carol. So quick. We're not gonna be able to hear from anybody. Oh, we have some comments. Sorry with the, in the, from our listeners. Thank you, Peter. So let's hear. I would love to hear from you Colin. What, what happens to you when you do that exercise before we go? 

Colin Kingsmill: You know, for me, it's all about coming into the present moment.

I think I think so often the world we live in can have our minds rushing into the future, right? And creating anxiety about the future. Future storytelling and then maybe running into the past with regret or depression or even anxiety about the past and things like that. And I think exercises like this and staying in flow [00:25:00] allows you to be powerful in this moment in time, because that's really all you have.

You don't have. Anything else? You might have your next breath, right? So if, if, if these exercises and these thoughts and thinking that we raised or brought up today can bring you into the now I think that's extremely powerful. 

Christal Duncan: Yeah. So 

Colin Kingsmill: that's what it does for me is just gets me to here and now.

Yeah. Cause that's, It's all you got. The rest are just thoughts. 

Christal Duncan: Yeah. 

Colin Kingsmill: So 

Christal Duncan: when I do it, I am one of the things that I always feel is I feel that this, let's go a little bit back here on my shoulders. Even if I don't realize that I'm, I'm holding something, just that moment of just allowing yourself to just settle into something just gives your body permission to relax and thus Gives your mind also the same permission to relax.

So thank you to those of you who have joined us today. Don't forget [00:26:00] that we believe in you number one, and we consider it an honor and a privilege that you would join us and that you are part of our getting to unstuck listenership and viewership. And if you did like this episode, please share it.

If you know someone else who could benefit from it, that would be your gift to them, and we would appreciate it. Don't forget about our free workshop coming up next week, and stay tuned for our upcoming training sessions and great things that are going on. Thanks for joining us. 

Colin Kingsmill: Thank you. Take care, everybody.

Have a good week.