15: What Is Flow And How Can You Create It?

In this episode of Group X Appeal, Kimberly and Terry explore the concept of flow, a state of complete immersion in activities that brings joy and fulfillment. 

They discuss various activities that can induce flow, share personal experiences and insights on how they tap into flow, and encourage you to find your own opportunities that will help you experience this uplifting state.

Have you ever felt so engaged in what you’re doing that you lose track of time? That’s flow and it’s so good for you! Tune in to dive deeper.

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Stay Connected with Kimberly:
- @kimberlyspreenglick on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube
- email: kimberly@theinspiredlifeuniversity.com
- website: www.theinspiredlifeuniversity.com

Stay Connected with Terry:
- @terryshorter on Instagram & Facebook
- email: terry@rippedplanet.com
- website: www.rippedplanet.com

Transcript

My goodness, so excited. We are here on episode 15, Terry Shorter and? Kimberly Spreen Glick So happy that you joined us. We're talking about five of the most popular activities that often lead to a state of flow. And how would you define flow again, Kimberly? What's the best description that you can come up with? You know, the simplest description I've used with the clients and coaches I've worked with is that when you're

doing an activity and you are so fully immersed, you're engaged with what you're doing that you just kind of lose track of space and time. It's those moments where you think you've been doing it for 10 minutes, but then you look at your watch and it's been an hour and you're like, where did the time go? And not only that, but it's an enjoyable thing. So you kind of don't want it to end. You want it to keep going. Absolutely.

And as a former athlete, we would call that getting in the zone. So same sort of concept where you are just so immersed in it in the moment, having the best time, the most enjoyable time, or maybe even the most productive time. And it just time stands still. So the very first, you know, kind of popular activity that can lead you into that place of flow is simply

physical exercise or something that we do. We know that well, a little too well sometimes, especially at the end of like days like today. three classes for me today. about you? Really? Just two for me. Okay. Two for you. yeah. So were you feeling in flow today? I was in flow for sure. All right. And what were you feeling in flow doing? Well, for me it was teaching. Okay. So we'll get to that. All right. Fantastic. So, but other activities like running, whether it's

Yoga. my god. You mean like the runners high? Yeah. Yeah, I've never experienced that. No, why would you want to do that? If I'm running you can be guaranteed someone is chasing me. They better be. Yeah, so these kind of activities just kind of you know get you into a rhythm that promotes that that sense of focus and that mindfulness as well. Were there any of those activities that I mentioned that put you there? I know yoga does. me yoga. That would be the number one yoga.

Kimberly/terry (02:08.309)
I could flow on my mat and just forget everything around me. could flow on the mic too. You know I can. Wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki. So yeah, same thing. When I'm on the mat, same sort of thing. Also, I mentioned earlier off the mic that lately I love the bag, the boxing bag, kickboxing bag. So punching, kicking that. He's not a violent person, I swear. No, but. Maybe this is why.

It's one of those stress relieves that we talked about in the last episode, right? So, so that's one of the things, but we would love to know what physical exercise do you engage in that helps put you in that state of flow? We'd love to hear that. yeah. What are those activities that you're just so in it, you lose track of time. I bet someone's going to put pickleball. you know it. That's the new one. Or maybe that's a sport. I was just invited last night actually.

by the Brasha sisters. They're professional pickleball players. They go to our club. And they take my roll and release class every Tuesday night when they're in town, if they're not doing tournaments. And they invited me to come play with them. But the court was full. no. Yeah. So I was excited to get into flow with them and learn pickleball. So we'll have to do it again, hopefully next week. Yeah. It'll happen. So what's another way you can get into flow? Well, definitely if you have any hobbies, creative hobbies that you enjoy.

very common one for flow for people would be like painting, drawing, gardening, writing. I love writing. It's funny because I have a hard time starting to write. But once I start writing, yeah, then I just kind of get into it and it's pretty wild. For some it's maybe playing a musical instrument. It's any kind of activity, a hobby that requires kind of deeper.

concentration but but his self-expression, know, it's your ability to to tap into something that you're passionate about Absolutely. And that's that's always a fun one a super productive one and you always end up with You know, you have an end product, right? That's something that's tangible which is so it's a creative hobby for you You know, it used to be songwriting. I don't write write music anymore that much at all but it used to be writing music and

Kimberly/terry (04:24.342)
something I'd love to be able to get back to because that was a place of joy and fulfillment. And again, you end up with something that's tangible that you can listen to and that.

you're emotionally invested in as well, which takes the experience to a different level. Did you write the song, We Can Love that you sang? You're so funny. No, I'm serious. Yes. That's a serious question. OK. I thought you doing like one of those plugs. No, it's not a plug. I was curious. I never asked you that. This is a song that Terry sang. And I've used it in yoga. And I've used it in cycle. Thank you for using it. But I never knew you wrote it. I just knew you sung it. I don't song it. He sang it. He sang did it.

so cool. I love that song. that wrote that song in 2020 during as you call it, the great pause. Yeah. And it was when there was a lot of social and political, you know, just a lot of strife that was happening. I just thought, you know, it's not that difficult. We can all overcome this. We can all get past this. If we can do just one simple thing, we can love. We can love. And so that's where the song, the inspiration came from. And so thanks for playing it.

yay. I like that. Thank you. So, you know, another way to kind of get into that place of flow sports and games and kind of talked a little bit about we talked about. Yeah, I kind of throw a pickleball. messed it up. That's all right. basketball, soccer, any solo activities like rock climbing or bouldering. Give me a boulder. Dancing. Kimberly just mentioned she was dancing to what kind of music?

Prince tribute band about a month ago. So how could you not? I got all kinds of sweaty. Yeah. And she didn't even have her dancing shoes on. Did you expect the expect to be dancing the entire night away? Yep. You did. I did. So you had the proper shoes. I did. OK. Yeah. No heels. All right. Nice. Smart. Smart. Smart. So so you know the sports and games, know, team sports again, like we said, pickleball. Those are.

Kimberly/terry (06:29.132)
fantastic activities you can engage in and immediately get into flow. before you know it, you're just a hot, sweaty mess. You know what I love about the sports and games option as a category of getting into flow is that it involves other people. So it is the activity itself, but then the engagement with other people that kind of bring you into flow. And so it ends up kind of firing on multiple cylinders as far as how it is good for you. Yeah, that's social wellbeing. Yeah, you know it. So what about, do you like?

puzzles and strategy games. For sure. my gosh, I'm such a nerd for a good brain teaser. I love love strategy. When I did math back in school, I remember what I loved most were the word problems. Yeah. Because it was like more of a strategy that you had to figure out. Like, do remember the ones where like there'd be

eight guests sitting at a table, at a round table, and you had to find out who was sitting in each seat, what color they were wearing, what their name was, and what they were eating for dinner, and it was all this process of elimination, it was just all kind brain teaser stuff. they have all of that. any kind of thing that challenges you to basically turn on the part of your brain to help you find solutions and to figure out, for example, chess, that's a strategy game if there ever was one. I actually,

learned a little bit of chess in a game called No Stress Chess. Have you heard of this? No, no, no stress chess. It's so lame. Okay, chess pros don't be a hater. laugh. But what it does is you draw a card and it has a picture of the piece you're allowed to move with a little diagram of which way you're allowed to move it. okay, that's good. Because lot of people don't realize. Yeah, there's no strategy there because you're kind of being told what you can do. But at least I got to learn a little bit because my son's really into chess.

And then you were saying you used to do Sudoku. Yeah. Sudoku and I had Sudoku books, like magazines. And it got to the point where I was gifted an electronic Sudoku game. that's like another level. the batteries ran out. Wow. That is serious. The things we didn't know we were going to learn about Terry Shorter today. So it's really good. And it's also really good for your brain to put it in that kind of problem solving mode.

Kimberly/terry (08:42.697)
And we were talking before we jumped on here about escape rooms as well, doing something like an escape room, whether it be indoor or outdoor. There was one I was telling Terry about, I don't know. I think it's nationwide. So hopefully this could be a good tip for you, but it's called clued up games. Clued up games. Yeah. And I think it's just clued up with two P's clued up.com. Hey, we got our beatbox. And they do outdoor. They call them scavenger hunt slash escape room games.

and they will bring to life popular stories. Like the first one I ever did was Alice in Wonderland. And the whole purpose of the escape room was to help Alice escape from the Queen of Hearts who had captured her. And so we had to go, we walked, it took us about three hours. Walking all through the streets of San Clemente, a town here in Southern California. And you get to explore outside and it's an app. So you're following along with the story. You're solving riddles inside the story. And each time you solve a riddle, you get another clue.

and then you go to another point and it uses GPS to kind of send you all over the place. It is so fun and it really challenges your brain. got to figure it out. I love it. So you're getting all these different aspects too of, of, of wellbeing. So you're getting environmental wellbeing, you're getting the social wellbeing as well as intellectual wellbeing, right? Lots of movement. So good. Lots of movement. We like to move. We like to move it. Move it.

So I love that, I've never heard of that before. it's so fun. Okay, so we're gonna do it. Clued up. We're gonna do it and then we're gonna do an episode that talks about our experience solving something. Do it live. Do a Clued let us know if you want us to do a scavenger hunt live. That would be long though. We have to just do the highlights. So I love it. So learning new actually puzzles and strategy games. That's cool. So what about the last one? Number five, learning a new skill, learning and skilled mastery.

Yeah. tackling like challenging things like cooking. That's a challenge. That is a challenge. I love cooking. Are you a cooker or a baker? I'm more of a baker. OK. But I do, I want to learn to cook more. I did a cooking class a few months ago. It so fun. And you're going to do more, right? Uh-huh. Right? So or maybe something like coding or learning a new language often immerses you and flow as you.

Kimberly/terry (11:06.523)
focus on improving yourself When I was growing up, my mother, she was the IT director for the city of hope. She retired from city of hope and she was the national director for IT. And as a young kid, we were the first ones on our street to have a computer, a personal computer. It was a Tandy TRS 80 computer. was. Yeah, it was. How big was it? It was.

freaking humongous, the, it was fast at the time. I think it was like 80 K. Whoa. Stop the madness. So my mom brought that home and my mom and dad brought that home and she bought my brothers and I a coding book. So we learned how to code as kids. must've been, I don't know, eight, nine years old and my brother, other brother was seven and the other brother was five, four or five years old. before he can even, you know, go to school,

we had this book out and we are sitting there coding in DOS and learning how to do these simple games and how to do simple graphics and different animation. And it literally just for this little animation, almost like pong, the game pong where the dot just kind of ricochets off the walls and you have a paddle you're trying to get, right? So it was kind of like that. We were learning how to code like that and it literally would take a week. But it didn't seem like it. And by the time we got done coding these games,

It was like it was the most fulfilling most exciting exhilarating thing ever because we did it But we didn't realize how much time had passed by like literally games would take us or these simple graphics would take an entire week to do Amazing. Yeah So learning these new skills and you know Are always fun cooking baking coding learning new languages any other mastery things that put you in flow?

You know, interesting, when I ventured into the online space, was very, let's just say not technology proficient. I was not a strong suit. I'm more of an in-person hugging type of person. That works. need those people. Right? And I'm a good vision person. I'm good with strategy, but as far as actual implementation in the online world, I absolutely knew nothing and I feared it. Right.

Kimberly/terry (13:26.748)
it was an interesting road to go down having to learn like the different software to be able to bring an online platform to life. And I would find myself getting, once I learned how to do something, would get lost in it. know, new things. aspects and yeah, learning new things about how to, and it's certainly not coding. This not a coder, but certainly a.

drag and dropper, drag and droppers, dragon slayers that they all were. We'll take it. I can drag and drop and manipulate things from the external side. Yeah. And I found that I really, I'm still not great at it, but it is something that I enjoy and it's rewarding. Yeah, it's rewarding. Yeah. Definitely rewarding. You end up with a website. How about that? How about that? And people go and visit it and interact. One hopes. We do hope.

So these are just some activities that just blend the right amount of challenge and enjoyment to help you lose yourself in the moment. And we'd love to hear your five. What are the five things, whether it's physical exercise or creative hobbies, sports games. What brings you into flow? What would be the activities that you could do that you just lose track of time and you just want to keep it going? Yeah, we'd love to hear that. Again, we love ideas. We would love to.

get into flow through different methods and different activities over here as well. We're adventurous that way. I like to think. list we just shared is not all inclusive. There's lots of other ideas out there. So let us have them. Inspire us. Inspire us all. Please do. Please do. So that's it for getting into flow. Is there anything else that you can think of that you wanted to add?

No, other than can I just say for the record? can say whatever you like. You got the mic. I am drunk with power now, ladies and gentlemen. With that 40 over there. It's a 30. It's 30. I have to say for the record, this is flow for me. Yeah. This is so fun. It is. Yeah.

Kimberly/terry (15:30.813)
We will finish recording an episode and I'll think five minutes went by and it was 15 or 20 or whatever. It's just so fun. So cool. I love hearing that. So thank you for that. here. No, thank you for that. And hopefully it's been a flow experience for you too, as a listener or a watcher here on YouTube. And we would encourage you to share this episode. would truly, truly, truly mean the world to us. If you share this and pass this along to other folks who can download it, stream it and, and find their flow because all of us.

Once we find it, it is so fulfilling. It feels so amazing. And we need more of that. We do. I think that, you know, the problem is not that we don't know what it is. The problem is that it's typically more the exception than it is the rule when it comes to our day to day life experience. So our invitation to you is to really think about what activities bring you to flow. And if you're not sure, well, I think it's time to start experimenting, find activities that bring you into flow and then make them.

the norm in your day-to-day life as opposed to the exception. And I think you will find the way it impacts your life experience, your wellbeing, it's amazing. Love it, life-changing. So we are so excited that you took the time and the energy and just the interest and the desire to listen in and watch us. We truly appreciate it. And we are signing off on this Flow episode, episode 15.

Is that right? Yes, it is. is. One five. One five. snap. We're making progress. We are in flow, yo. So that is it. We truly appreciate you joining us today and we encourage you as always to make it a great day. And why Kimberly? Because it is a great day to have. It certainly is. Take care. Peace out. Much love.