Episode 16 : Flow Over Force: The Nervous System Secret to Getting More Done

🎙️ Episode 16
 Welcome to Episode 16 of The Less Stress, More Magic Podcast ✨

I’m your host, Erin Wallen, and I’m so glad you’re here.

This podcast is for capable, caring women who are doing all the “right” things—yet still feel overwhelmed, scattered, or stuck in stress. If you’ve ever felt like you have a million ideas but no clear direction—or like you’re busy but not moving forward—this episode is for you.

In This Episode

We’re diving into the flow state—what it is, why it matters, and how your nervous system plays a key role in accessing it.

We’ll talk about:
 • The difference between having too many ideas vs. not enough—and what it reveals about your nervous system
 • Why urgency and overwhelm are signs you’re outside of flow
 • How regulation creates clarity, focus, and better results
 • The “magic zone” (flow state) and how to access it more consistently
 • A simple framework to help you shift from force → flow in real time
 • Why less, intentional action leads to more momentum

Why This Matters

Flow isn’t something you force—it’s something you access.

When your nervous system feels safe, your mind becomes clear.
 When your mind is clear, your actions become focused.
 And when your actions are focused, everything starts to feel easier and more effective.

This is how you move from overwhelm and scattered energy… into clarity, momentum, and ease.

If you’re ready to go deeper into this work and build a nervous system that supports the life and results you want, you can explore my signature program here:
 👉 https://erinwallencoaching.myflodesk.com/powerofeaseprogram

Reflection / Journal Prompts

Take a moment to reflect or journal:
 • Do I tend to feel like I have too many ideas or not enough—and what might that say about my current state?
 • When have I experienced true flow in my life? What did that feel like?
 • What is one way I can intentionally support myself in accessing flow this week?

✨ Free Resource
 Support your nervous system with my Daily Ease Reset Checklist—a simple, grounding tool to help you shift out of stress and back into calm throughout your day.
 👉 https://erinwallencoaching.myflodesk.com/dailyeasechecklist

🎧 Subscribe & Follow
 New episodes drop weekly on Tuesdays.

If this episode resonated, I’d be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a 5-star review—it helps more women find the podcast and step into more ease 🤍

📱 Connect with me on Instagram for more support and behind-the-scenes:
 👉 https://www.instagram.com/joybyerin/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So here are 13 tips for accessing flow. Be curious. Seek clarity. Create. Care. Connect. Have courage. Calm your nervous system. Be confident. Play. Practice patience. Persist. Be present and keep your perspective. So these 13 things only occur when we're regulated. So if we are intentionally choosing those things, it helps us get back to center. Welcome to the Less Stress, More Magic Podcast. I'm your host, Erin Wallen, stress freedom coach, intuitive strategist, and former clinical pharmacist. This show is for busy, capable women with big goals who are ready to stop living with so much stress and are ready for a more ease-based, effective way of living and working. Here, we explore how stress is a survival response, not a success strategy, and how regulating your nervous system leads to more clarity, better decisions, and everyday magic. I can't wait to share with you. Let's dive in. Hi there and welcome back to the Less Stress More Magic podcast. This is episode 16, and we are gonna talk all about flow and the flow state. And I am really excited to bring this, as I always am. So as we just settle in, I'm gonna just get right into a moment of grounding. I'm gonna invite you today to put your hands on your heart. Maybe just notice if you can start to tune in to the beating of your heart, breathing more deeply to fill in your heart. And as you exhale, just imagine letting things go just a little bit more. One more breath in, breathing in this space of safety and ease and love. And as you exhale, land into this moment, welcoming this discussion around flow and the flow state. So this is interesting, and this is just how my life tends to work. I start to see a pattern going on in my life or things that are happening around me, and then more and more and more evidence just starts coming in. So I have started just talking about how most of the people that tend to resonate with me are not people who have lack of ideas. They're people who tend to have too many ideas and don't know where to start. So I want you just to pause and just get curious. You are welcome wherever you are, and I will talk about how it relates to your nervous system state. But when you think about doing something in your life, are you like, I don't even know what to do? Or are you like, I have so many ideas, I don't know where to start? Which version do you tend to fall in? So I am definitely someone that rarely is a lack of ideas. I tend to have lots of good ideas, and really utilizing my nervous system has allowed me to really pick the right one for me at the right time and make forward momentum as more and more ideas start to flow in. And if you tend to have too many ideas, not that there's too many, but there's too many when we get overwhelmed and don't know which one to start with, that tends to be one of too much activity in our nervous system. So we start to have more stress, overwhelm, energy, and that's almost like a low-key flight response. We're having all this stuff coming in and we're trying to like kind of go after all of it. Opposite end, our nervous systems are all going in different states. We are shifting constantly. So it's just becoming more and more aware of them. But we can also go into a state of not enough energy. So if you're feeling like, I can't even think, I don't know what to do. If you're there, and I certainly have moments of that, that is so human. And I'm sure you do too if you are a human. So if you don't think you do, you probably just don't have the awareness around it yet. Um, so just starting to tune in, what are the moments that I go there? So when we don't have enough ideas, our nervous system is in a lower state. So just becoming aware of do I have too many ideas, do I have not enough ideas might signal where your nervous system tends to be more of the time. And for me, it's in that place of too many ideas. So in the past, I always had ideas coming in, and I would be kind of like chasing and going after them and maybe going from one to the other, kind of focusing on how quickly I could get through things versus really slowing down enough to know what was the next best step and taking really intentional, clear action in that way. And less is always going to be more. So when we are really focused versus, I remember in between being a pharmacist and being a coach, I did social selling really successfully. And there was always this phrase about like throwing spaghetti at the wall and just like finding out what sticked. So it's like this abundance of action, and some of it works, right? And then we might tend to think, oh, it's the abundance of action that gives us progress. And it's like, actually, no, it was like despite all this abundance of chaotic action, we might have still got some results. But if we slow down, we will always start to get clarity on what is the best thing for us in that moment. And taking really intentional steps, number one, gets rid of the noise, really clarifies like which direction we're moving in, and we tend to get better results with a lot less effort, or yeah, a lot less effort, a lot less energy, a lot less time. Everything I'm sure you're excited about if you're listening in. How this relates to the flow state is really starting to recognize. Well, first let me define the flow state. And I brought up a definition. So, what it feels like, if you have not heard this term, when you're in flow state, you're completely focused, distractions fade away. Time seems to pass differently, often faster. The activity feels effortless, even if it's challenging. You have a sense of control and clarity, and you're doing the task for its own sake, not just the outcome. So there's so many things that stand out about this, but the one thing about like you have a sense of control and clarity. When we have so many ideas, it's almost like we're trying to chase them to get control versus having the control already, right? Like we're controlled, we are safe regardless of this, if this gets done or not. One phrase that I always like to kind of consider is like, if this feels urgent and it's not life-threatening, I am working outside of my flow, or how what I like to call with my clients the magic zone. So the magic zone is kind of interchangeably with the flow state. This is where our nervous system is really balanced. And I find there is this study called, well, it's a law, right? The Yerkes Jodson law, and they talk about how our energy and effectiveness increases up to a point, and then it starts to decrease, kind of like a bell curve. So as we increase our energy and effort, we're gonna get more results, but only up to a point. And the point in which this changes is actually the point in which we start having stress and overwhelm. So as soon as we're feeling like, oh, I have too many ideas, I don't know where to start. That is one sign that you're outside of that perfect flow peak performance window. So I have started sharing that. I had posted a poll on my stories on Instagram about like which one are you? Are you someone with too many ideas or not enough ideas? And 100% of the people who voted, and probably because they resonate with me, and this is also true for me, said too many ideas. Secondly, I recently had a photo shoot with one of my friends, and I had a great time, and I was not checking social media or email or responding to messages. And a few hours later, I get back to my car and I just try to catch up for a minute, and I have lots of messages and questions about my programs and different things, and my nervous system went to a place of like almost I have to get this done. I have to respond. I don't want them waiting. And it was like slow down. This urgency means that I'm not in my peak performance, my flow state. None of this is life-threatening. I'm gonna give myself a moment to calm down. So many areas, more things that we can talk about. How, like, of course, these messages came in because I was in the energy of flow. So when we are in the energy of flow, we are opening ourselves up to being safe enough to have more come in, right? And then it really becomes a question of am I going to maintain or increase my capacity for more for overflow? Or am I going to let my old patterning come back in, get in that dysregulation, get in that chasing the results, getting out of the flow state. It has to be a really intentional decision to keep going back to flow, to your magic zone, to working in regulation. So, all of this to say, and is, you know, I've been really thinking about this. I've been thinking about the flow state. I've been thinking about working with this clarity of what is the next best step. And like when I use when I'm in this place of having so many ideas and almost feeling like this chasing energy or this urgency to them, when I pause to give myself my tools to regulate, the clarity comes. Like sometimes we feel, I hear this from my clients, like almost like we don't have time to regulate, but I promise you, utilizing regulation is going to be the skill that gives you the time back. There is another quote that I think about too, and I don't remember who said it. You can look it up. They say something like, if you don't have time to meditate one hour a day, then you need to meditate two hours a day. So I do not meditate one hour a day. Most days I do meditate because it is something I also find gives me time back. And it is one of my tools and my regulation toolkit. But I also have so many tools now that I can do anywhere, anytime, that take less than a minute. And my nervous system is really just becoming more resilient and fluid to bounce back to center. But I have to remind myself that this is what I'm choosing to do. So this conversation has been going, and then another synchronicity. I was at the library with my son. We were looking at books, and I just love to go over to their new release section, and I totally allow myself to judge books by their cover. I kind of just like scanned through. And the reason I do this is because we have so many sensory bits of information that are coming at us at all times, hundreds of billions of sensory bits every single second, and we can consciously only pick up 50. And within our brain, we can kind of prime it to pick things up subconsciously for us. So with everything that I've been thinking about about working in your magic zone, working in your flow state, my brain was pre-programmed to see things that needed that I wanted to see that had more evidence of that, if that makes sense. So just challenge yourself. Maybe plant a seed if you're going to a library or a bookstore or really anywhere about what you want to see more of and just be open to the magic. And it feels like magic, but it's truly neuroscience. Okay, so the book that was on the shelf that like grabbed my attention right away is called The Flow Habit. And it was written by Lori Smith. I have not read the whole book, but I just started to flip through, and I thought it was such a just a synchronous moment that I loved. Um, but there was a couple things that just highlighted from that book that I thought would be perfect to share with you. So she shares there are tips for accessing flow that I'm gonna share with you. And then she also shares four questions to get into the flow state, and I thought they were just perfect. So, tips for accessing flow, she pulls from some research from Richard Schwartz, who does the parts work, which I really like. And he talks about there being eight C's and five P's of really being what he calls aligned with yourself. And this is what I see about aligned with your flow state, aligned with your magic zone, being regulated. So it's really where you want to be in order to get the most done in the least time. And she said she took his work from Parts work and kind of shifted these eight C's and five Ps to be almost action items to access flow. So I thought it was a great tweak, and I wanted to share it with you. So here are 13 tips for accessing flow. Be curious, seek clarity, create, care, connect, have courage, calm your nervous system, be confident, lay, practice patience, persist, be present, and keep your perspective. So these 13 things only occur when we're regulated. So if we are intentionally choosing those things, it helps us get back to center. So I think really to highlight noticing, do I feel like I have so many ideas? I'm almost chasing, they almost feel urgent, but none of them are life-threatening. Maybe I can try some of these tips to get me back to center or any other tool in your regulation toolkit that you know helps you. And as always, if you really want to build out a really clear, uniquely powerful toolkit, make sure that you check my links and programs because that is my specialty. Okay, and then she said, which I love, these four questions. And honestly, I use that today in recording this podcast. So I'll talk about that in a moment as well. But she has these four questions or four kind of categories. So cat and she used the acronym FEAL to get into flow. So the F stands for focus, and she asks, What is your top priority in your life right now? So this is so good because right, if we have so many ideas, pausing and saying which one matters most, one, right? Not which 10. Which one matters what most? Because we can only do one thing at a time. So pausing to pick one activity. Two, she calls engage the E, the first E in feel. And she said, What are some small changes you can make to align your life even more with those priorities? How can you make your life more fun? So I really like to simplify this to how can this be more fun? How can this be more fun? I recorded another podcast a few back. You can scroll back about fun being the business plan and why that is so powerful. So maybe just simplifying up question number two, if you would like, or you can have what I've read the first time, but how can I make this more fun? Or what would be fun? Um, question three. Well, the letter is the second E stands for equalize. And she said, in what areas of your life would you more energy and effort help things flow better? And where in your life would lightening up help? Okay, so this is gonna go back to the nervous system. She doesn't necessarily use nervous system language, but she is saying, right, if we are in that bell curve, if we don't have enough energy, right, and that would show up as not enough ideas. So if that is you or if that is you right now, not enough ideas means how can I bring my energy up? And if you're probably like me, because you resonate and are listening to this podcast and maybe have too many ideas, it's how can I bring my energy closer to center? How can I lighten this up a little bit, right? And it can go back to those 13 things we talked about, or the regulating tools to get back to center. And finally, listen and let go. What feedback internally and externally are you receiving about how well your life is aligned with your top priorities? How can you let a greater flow support you in the areas of your life where you want to feel more flow? So the four feel steps to flow, again, focus, engage, equalize, listen, and let go. And really, I have been simplifying since picking up this book just recently to okay, what is the top thing? What would make this fun? How can I bring my energy closer to center? And then always letting go, right? Letting go of it having to be perfect, letting go of having to figure it out or holding on to the results. That's that's another conversation I want to have about how releasing the results kind of gives space to so many more results that come in. And I just talked about potentiality on a previous episode, too, and how when we let go of the results, we're opening to results unknown from our current reality and that are often far greater than what we have seen so far. So, really just following that. So, for me today, it's Sunday that I'm recording this, and I have a few things that I wanted to do. I will say I was not feeling super dysregulated by any any today. I was not feeling super dysregulated. So, this really can work depending where you are. There's levels of this, but I was just thinking about okay, like this, this I'd love to do, this I'd love to do, this I'd love to do. And I was like, pause in order to tap in flow state, which is where I get the most done with the least effort, and it just feels fun and easy picking one thing. What was the one thing I want to do? I was like, I want to record a podcast. How was this gonna be more fun? I was like, today's episode, I am just gonna wing it. I'm gonna hit record and just speak from my heart. Some days I think this more through, journal, I do more research behind the scenes, and that sometimes feel feels perfectly aligned. But today, what felt fun is just kind of seeing what was meant to come through and trusting that that was gonna be perfect for this episode. In terms of equalize, we can always get more regulated. So I took a really long walk, I've been nourishing my body, I was just laying on my higher dose mat. So really priming myself to deliver in the highest energy and letting go. So, really letting go of it having to be perfect, letting it go of it having to be hard, letting go of this having to create any result and just being here and serving. So I hope you can step more into your flow state. I will leave you with a few questions about number one, what does flow look like for you? So, really, maybe thinking about two or three moments where you have experienced flow. And then also thinking about how am I going to choose to step into flow intentionally this week, maybe using some of the frameworks that I shared with you on this call. And as always, I love to connect. So share with me your takeaways. If you love this episode, I would love if you could review it and also share with a friend, just getting this into more ears, helping people access their nervous system and living life with more ease is such a deep passion for me. So I really appreciate you being here and you sharing and you listening. And I will be back next Tuesday with another episode. Have a beautiful day. Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode supported you, you can download my free Daily Ease reset checklist. It's linked in the show notes and designed to help you shift out of stress and into ease this week. Make sure you're following the podcast so these conversations can meet you each week. I'll see you next time.