The Flow State

The Concept of Flow

If you watch anyone who is skilled at something, there is often a flow that connects one motion to the next and one task to the next. Great athletes usually have this flow. Skilled musicians flow from one note and one phrase to the next with fluid precision. Highly skilled artists seem to flow as they construct their art, and the art itself often flows as the parts of the picture fit nicely together. Good speakers flow in their speech. Brilliant thinkers flow in their thoughts. When you reach a level of skill or ability where you can flow, it’s liberating, natural, easy, and life giving to the person who in the state of flow, as well as those who benefit from the productivity of those who are in a state of flow.

The secular world has come up with a concept called flow, but God already thought of the concept of flow long before the secular world did. God wants his very life to flow out of us as Jesus said in John 7:38, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” In regard to the secular world, the concept of flow is based on research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who did interviews in regard to what makes people happy.  According to Csikszentmihalyi, people tend to become happy when they find a state of what he refers to as flow because so many people described their experience where a skill or task that they were doing flowed out of them. Flow can be defined by the following characteristics:

• You are doing something that you enjoy and that you are good at.
• You are completely focused on the task at hand
• The activity you are doing is challenging enough to require complete engagement, but not so hard that it turns into futile effort that’s is not productive.
• You forget about distractions that aren’t involved in the process of what you are doing and become one with your task.
• You are not conscious of time because you absorbed in a task.
• You become creative and productive
• You feel happy and in control with the confidence that you can do the task you are engaged in.

Steps for Going into flow

• Find an enjoyable challenge that’s not so easy that you become bored or so hard that your efforts are futile.
• Develop your skills in order to be able to meet the challenge.
• Set clear goals.
• Focus completely on the task at hand.
• Make sure that you’ve set aside sufficient time to start flowing with the experience.
• Monitor your emotional state to avoid doing a task out of fear, worry, anger or negative emotions.

 

 Flowing With God

After hearing and reading about the concept of flow, I realize that it is a secular name for biblical concepts that God already knows about and wants us to experience. There may be some people who try to turn it into a weird type of altered state of consciousness, but that’s not what flow is about, and it’s not what the Bible is about. God simply wants us to be free from worry, fear, sin, guilt, and obsession in order to free our minds up to live life in a way that allows our positive emotions and abilities to be freely released. High productivity and enjoyment of life are the result of being in the state of flow.

Within our spiritual lives we are to flow with the Spirit and allow him to flow through us. This comes as a result of abiding in Christ and in his word, and it is what makes us fruitful or productive. John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” This verse tells us that living in Christ makes us fruitful, which simply means that our work will be productive instead of wasted effort.

Flowing in Love and Obedience to God

We also know that God’s greatest command is to love him and our neighbor, and that we will be in God’s love as we follow his ways. God intends that as we flow in love and obedience to him, our lives will be filled with joy. John 15:10 says, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Hopefully you can see from this that true fellowship with God and experiencing his love are keys to a joy filled life.

The Right State will Maximize Your Actions

Over my years of living life, it has become increasingly apparent that actions are important, but the spiritual, emotional, relational, and physical state that we are in while we do those actions plays a big role in determining the effectiveness of those actions. The flow state is simply a name that describes what we are experiencing when we are living optimally inwardly and outwardly, and the various aspects of life that we engage in are maximized.

There are things that we can do to enhance the state of flow and there are things that hinder this state. The Bible gives us many admonishments on how to let God’s Spirit freely flow through us, and various hindrances that we need to get rid of in order to allow this to happen. When God’s Spirit freely flows through us, life giving emotions along with the God given abilities begin flow freely from us as well. The hidden treasures that God has put within us begin to come out. In the process, we are blessed and become a blessing to others. One of our goals should be to increase our understanding of how to live in this state more and more in order to release the treasures God has put in us.

 

Being Fully Engaged in What You Do

The Bible is very practical. It says in Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heat, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” One the requirements for being in a state where your abilities and positive emotions flow out of you in an optimal way is to be fully engaged in what you are doing. If you are distracted or lacking in motivation, you will not be fully engaged in the task that you doing. God knows this and points us towards love for him and eternal rewards as motivating reasons that will help us to be fully in engaged in the tasks that we do.

Doing What You do out of Love Causes Full Engagement

There are a lot of reasons that people do what they do. One reason is that we like what we are doing. Another reason is that we love someone and desperately want to do something for them. This is what God tells us to focus on as we face the many tasks that we do throughout each day. Of course this is meaningless if we don’t truly love God. God is the greatest, most perfectly lovable being in the universe. If we don’t love him, we have a distorted view of who he truly is. Another reason for finding it hard to love God would be if we have a sin that we cherish that puts us at odds with a God who doesn’t like sin. However, if you cultivate a healthy understanding of who God is and the sacrifice that he has made for each one of us to save us from sin, and see that he has already planned an eternity for each one of us that is greater than we can imagine, then the ability to love him will come.

Love can cause us to soar with ecstasy even when we face the most mundane tasks because doing it for someone that we love makes it worth it. If we know that what we are doing will also bring a great reward, and that doing a simple task with a joyful loving heart is what will bring that reward, then we are more likely to put our whole heart into what we are doing. This is the power of serving a God we love, and the power of knowing that he loves us. Loving God and knowing that he loves us and rewards all we do for him compels us to be fully engaged in what we do. This is one factor that contributes to a flow of positive emotions and a release of our abilities that brings about productivity and enjoyment in life.

 

Automaticity

Of all of the great college basketball coaches throughout the history of college basketball, John Wooden is considered by many to be the greatest. One of the concepts that Wooden believed in was “automaticity.” While it’s often a term that is used in the context that is specific to reading and math, Wooden used it in a general context where a person gets good enough at something to do it automatically without having to think about it. It was John Wooden’s goal for his players to get good enough at basketball so that they could make the right decisions, and perform the right actions in a reflexive manner without a lot of thought.

One aspect of flow is that a person who enters into a flow state loses themselves in a task they are doing. They are not overthinking the moment and they are just letting what comes naturally flow out of them, which is one reason it’s called flow. How does a person come to a point where they can achieve automaticity and just let themselves flow in a skill or a task? Referring back to John Wooden, he believed that repetition was the key.

Repetition

If you watch someone ski or skate for the first time, it’s very hard for them to flow. They are tense, tentative, jittery, and unstable. They will need to practice until they get comfortable. It will help to have someone show them the technique and to move slowly in the beginning until they get the feel of it.  As they continue to practice, they will be able to relax and keep their balance. Their skiing or skating motions will begin to work together. Eventually the right motion will begin to flow out of their body into fluid movement with less and less effort. With enough repetition, the skill will become automatic. If they were to pursue it even further, they would learn more advanced moves at faster speeds. As each new skill is mastered, it would reach a point where it would flow easily with automaticity.

Part of learning a task or a skill well enough to do it in a state of automaticity means to practice it while in a state of automaticity as much as possible. A lot of people stop right when they reach automaticity instead of staying in that state. For example, it is common for a person who is practicing the piano to practice a piece of music  until they finally get it right once. As soon as they get it right, they are satisfied and quit playing it to go on to something else. It often works far better to get something right and then repeat it once it’s right in order to reinforce doing right until it starts flowing naturally and easily. If a person quits practicing the first time they get it right,  the correct practice has little reinforcement. The skill quickly fades and they have to start over in their next practice session with trying to get it right again. A better idea is for a person to practice until they start to flow, and to stay in that flow for a while instead of quitting when they finally get there.

When You Get There, Stay in that State for a While

When you really feel on and you’re on a roll with something, stay with it and repeat it. Don’t work hard at getting there and then quit as soon as you get there. Let it really sink in while you’re at your best so that you learn when you’re in a state of flow, not when you’re trying to get there.  This way it becomes more permanent. In the beginning stages, this may not always be possible, but when you hit a state of flow and it starts to feel easy, natural, automatic, and repeatable, settle in for a while and practice in that state.

Ample amounts of practice while doing something correctly is an important element in attaining automaticity, and automaticity is often a part of flow. People tend to enjoy what they are doing much more when it flows forth from them easily and naturally. If you are pursuing excellence in a skill, one of your goals should be to develop automaticity.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers:

Bad Results In Spite of a Good Effort

It’s possible that you embrace a given challenge and work at it as hard as you can, only to find that you are obtaining poor results. In other words, your work has come to the point where it’s all sacrifice without any benefit or productivity to it. This is bound to happen at some point in almost all of our lives. There are times when we try hard and things seem to get worse instead of better. This is one of the biggest discouragers to enthusiastic work. It’s even possible that we think that God is against us when we keep trying and keep failing. This makes it easy to lose heart and do what we do out of a sense of responsibility instead of being fully engaged at the heart level.

Working Unto the Lord

Perhaps you think that God is going to reward you according to the results you achieve from your work and the results you are achieving are not good in spite of your best effort. Just remember in Colossians 3:23-24 that God tells us to work for him with all our heart and that we will receive an inheritance as a reward. The Bible doesn’t say that God will only reward us when we become a wild success, rather it tells us to work at what we do with all our heart as though we are working for the Lord. The emphasis is not on an outward result, the emphasis in the Bible is on working at what we are doing with all of our hearts. That’s what will determine our inheritance as a reward.

There were times when the apostles tried with all of their hearts to evangelize and disciple people and all they get in return was persecution and antagonism. Their results were not positive in the eyes of many. In Acts 5:40, the apostles were flogged for preaching, and in verse 41, “The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” In Acts 13:50-51, the Bible says, “…they stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”

In spite of the negative treatment that the disciples received, they were able to respond with joy.  They were trying to spread the gospel but received negative results for it. What they had in their favor in God’s eyes was that their hearts were totally into what they were doing. They knew they would be rewarded on the basis of their hearts, even when their efforts seemed to fail and bring suffering instead of benefit.

They Didn’t Quit

The heart attitude that the disciples were able to walk in was the result of doing what they were doing unto the Lord instead of unto man, and knowing that the persecution they were going through would bring a great reward in heaven. The persecution didn’t stop the gospel, nor did it stop the ministry of the gifts of the Holy Spirit from flowing from them. The same circumstances that would cause many of us to shut down did not cause the flow of life and the treasures that God put within them to shut down.

The disciples are just one example of people who experienced seemingly poor results for their efforts but it didn’t stop the hidden treasures from flowing from them. There are a lot of things that we may do with our whole heart only to end up with poor results. However, at any given moment, whether we see the result we want to see or not,  we can serve God with our whole hearts and experience his life flowing regardless of the circumstances we are in.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers: 

Uncertainty over God’s Will

If you become uncertain that what you are doing is within the will of God, it can become a distraction and you can easily lose focus. It’s very difficult to be fully engaged and flow in a task when you have negative thoughts about what you doing. If you proceed with doing something that you think may be out of God’s will, there will be an inner resistance that stems from feelings of guilt over what you are doing. Guilt will reduce the joy you experience and keep you from being able to fully engage in what you’re doing.

God did create us with a conscience that can experience the sensation of guilt. Guilt can be a God given tool that acts as a restraining force when we are considering doing something that is wrong. Sin is destructive and God built us with the ability to feel uncomfortable when we feel guilty in order to discourage us from doing things that are harmful to us and to others. This type of guilt can be beneficial because it steers us away from harm.

Discerning the Source of Opposition

While God created us to be able to experience guilt in a way that would be beneficial to us, Satan can use guilt in a way that is harmful. He can use it to make us feel unworthy of ever receiving forgiveness and can even make us feel guilty over things that we shouldn’t feel guilty for. Along with this, if you read the book of Job, you find that Satan can sabotage your circumstances and make you think that God was the one behind it all because you did something sinful to bring his judgment against you. You then feel as though you are out of God’s will, when the reality is that you may be in God’s will, but Satan is the one who is resisting you instead of God.

You must know the Word of God and let it guide you in terms of evaluating if you’ve been living righteous or sinful, and you must be close to God and let his Spirit lead you in terms of discerning whether you are living in God’s will. There are times when circumstances can be a poor indicator of whether or not you are in God’s will.

Asking God for Wisdom

James 1:5-7 tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”

Dealing with Doubt Through God’s Grace

There are people who would flow naturally and easily if they were engaged in a field that they are gifted in such as business, education, politics, the arts etc. However, they have been conditioned to believe that these things are spiritually inferior to being a missionary or a pastor. Each time they try to engage in a field of work that produces a natural state of flow, thoughts of guilt and spiritual inferiority arise. The guilt feelings that they experience serve to hinder their heart from being fully engaged in their work and it becomes difficult to work in a state of flow. It is important to discern what is coming from the Holy Spirit, and what is social expectation that is not rooted in God’s will.

It is hard for a man who doubts to be at peace because his mind is constantly going back and forth with uncertainty as to whether he is doing the right thing or not. This prevents him from pursuing anything from a view point of confidence and assurance. It’s hard to fully embrace an activity when you’re full of negative thoughts that are opposing what you are doing. I’ve been there and believe that many of us will sense uncertainties at times. We are imperfect humans who are on a journey where we are learning how to be led by the Spirit of God. If we miss God’s will, we must embrace the grace of God and know that he still loves us, accepts us, and is helping us in the process of learning how to follow him. We must know that when God corrects our direction in life, he’s doing it out of love and grace to help us, not out of malice and ill will.

When we come to the place where we are at peace with God in regard to doing his will, then there won’t be antagonistic thoughts that keep inhibiting us from fully engaging in what we are doing. We can freely embrace our pursuits with joy. This is an important part of being able to experience the abundant life of God’s Spirit freely flowing through us.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers: 

Too Much Desire and Not Enough Desire

When you experience a state of flow, you enjoy what you are doing. The enjoyment that you experience in a state of flow will tend to draw you back to the same setting or same activity in order to repeat the experience again. Enjoying an experience can easily cause you to become passionate about it. There is nothing wrong with this as long as you see that the experience is from God and it draws you closer to him. However, if we base our joy on the necessity of doing what we love to do apart from seeing God as the life giving center of all of life, it can backfire by causing uncertainty and anxiety.

The Certainty of God

Uncertainty rises out of the fact that there may be times when you are deprived of the opportunity to do an activity you are passionate about doing. This can kill your peace and cause emotional ups and downs. Your peace can also be at stake in regard to the outcome of things that you pursue with passion. When things that you pursue don’t turn out the way you had hoped, it can cause great heart-ache and disappointment. However, if your joy centers around certainties such as God’s love and the eternal treasures that are stored up for you in heaven, then you can recover quickly from disappointments and start walking in joy again.

Center Your Life on God to Avoid Obsession

Without centering your love on God, the desire for the good things he gives can become an obsession instead of a blessing. Obsession steals your joy in life by keeping you from fully enjoying the various aspects of life. When something good comes along that you could enjoy, you miss the enjoyment of it because you are preoccupied the whole time with one aspect of life that you are obsessed with. Obsession can keep you from making healthy transitions from one activity to the next and from being highly engaged with each activity and experience as it occurs. It’s the type of extreme desire that may produce temporary highs, but it keeps you from enjoying all of the aspects of a healthy, balanced life.

No Desire is not Good

Having said all this, you can go to the other extreme where you have no desire and hate everything without ever enjoying anything that life brings. An overly religious mindset may see this as a godly thing because it appears to keep people from the love of the world. After all, second John 2:15 tells us, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” John goes on to explain this as the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does. It basically means having too much desire for something to the point where it is an unhealthy obsession which we already discussed is an unhealthy thing. However, the Bible tells us to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Colossians 3:17). It’s hard to be thankful when you have no desire and don’t like anything in spite of the fact that God has blessed us with good things in life.

Do Everything as an Act of Worship to God

God wants us to experience joy as we live life. He wants us to enjoy our daily tasks and experiences while recognizing that he is the one who gave us both the desire and the ability to work. Loving what you are doing does not automatically indicate that you have fallen into the sin of loving the world unless it draws you away from centering your love on God. God’s desire is that everything we do and experience in life (apart from sin) would draw us to him as we recognize that he is the source of all good things and worship him in response to this.

You will be at your best when you are passionate about what you are doing. Working and living with joy and enthusiasm is far more productive than working and living with boredom, indifference, or contempt for what you are doing. The person with positive desire is highly engaged and highly focused, and the hidden treasures of ability and creativity will flow from them as a result.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers:

Imprisoned by the Urgent

No one can do everything. While I am writing this, there are people who are starving, people who are homeless, people who are sick, and people who need counseling, education, training, auto repair, home repair, and salvation. Helping to meet any of these needs is a good thing, but you are a limited human being who cannot help with everyone, everywhere, all of the time, with everything. If you have a family, it is likely that there are things you must do to take care of your family members and a job that you need to attend to in order to supply the needs of your family.

Pricking your Conscience with Urgency

Along with your family and daily obligations, you could also be crises minded. There are enough of them in your proximity to keep you going without sleep or rest for a good portion of your life. This can be used against your conscience if you let it. There are well-meaning people who may be called to devote themselves to urgent needs. The intensity of the urgent can easily outweigh the rest of the aspects of life to the point where they are blinded to the importance attending to the full spectrum of life. They will tend to be drawn to the most urgent needs to the point where a meaningful schedule that provides regular activity gets wiped out in favor of trying to be a rescuer to solve the next crises. This is ok if that’s what a person finds meaningful, but they can easily be so overwhelmed with the urgency of these needs that they constantly try to pull everyone else into the crises that they get involved in. They can prick your conscience with the urgency of what they are involved in in order to get you involved as well.

If you happen to get surrounded by people who are constantly pulling on you to join in the drama of urgent needs that they are attracted to, It can destroy your ability to get into a state of productive flow. To be in a state of flow requires that you are highly focused and productive in regard to what you are doing, and being pulled into other people’s business can undermine the joy that you experience when you are flowing with the calling that God has for your own life.

Your Own Call

God made you with your own talents, abilities, interests and desires, so that you would be drawn towards the things he created you to do according to his plan. God knows that when any aspect of life is neglected and forgotten, it begins to diminish the quality of life, so he took this into account by creating different people to be drawn to different things. We need, mechanics, builders, construction workers, plumbers, teachers, business men and women, those in crafts, the arts, music, technology, government, law enforcement, military, ministers, farmers, those in the medical profession, care takers, landscapers, and you name it. You don’t know how important any of it is until a profession dies and what you need is no longer available, then suddenly its importance becomes evident.

All of the different things that people do and are interested in are important, but they aren’t all immediately urgent. However, the neglect of any one of these things could eventually create an urgent need if it were neglected long enough. So do what God created you to do, because it is important, even though you may be among others who don’t see the importance of what you are doing because they are preoccupied with what is important to them. What’s important to you may not seem important to others at a given moment because it may not be an urgent need, but it will become important if it is neglected long enough.

Freedom from the Urgent so You can Flow

The whole point is to think all of this through ahead of time so that you can live a productive life with a clear conscious without being driven by guilt over not constantly doing urgent things that you think you are supposed to be doing. Occasional urgent situations that demand your time are unavoidable, but being in a state of constant urgency is avoidable. You cannot work, or live in a state of flow where you are fully engaged in a focused, productive, and joyful manner if you are imprisoned by the urgent, or by controlling people who constantly want to include you in helping with the next crises that seems too urgent to ignore. Stay focused on your own calling if you are being pulled in the wrong direction and keep a clear conscience about it.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers 

Dealing with Rejection

We have all experienced rejection to some degree. I don’t know anyone who likes being rejected by others. We as humans are basically made to thrive on acceptance, yet we often face the exact opposite with rejection. If being rejected affects us deeply enough, it can create enough pain and discomfort that we become fearful of it. This is when rejection tends to stay with us long after an experience where we encountered rejection. If we encounter a situation that led to rejection on a previous occasion, it’s easy to become fearful that This can kill our ability to relax and focus on a task that we need to participate in. It becomes impossible to fully engage in the task at hand because the fear of rejection is playing with our minds. This makes a productive state of flow very hard to attain.

Rejection: The Electric Fence that Makes you Stay Put

Rejection is like an electric fence. For example, if you began to move in a certain direction to pursue a goal or task, and you got stung often enough or severely enough with rejection along the way, chances are that  you will eventually stop moving in that direction. Suddenly the possibilities within your world become smaller and smaller because if you move in the wrong direction, you fear getting stung with rejection again. When this happens, it feels easier to just stay put. In other words, you quit trying to engage in things that you would like to do because you know you could run into rejection again.

Ridicule, mocking, put downs, being ignored, and being told to get lost because we are not good enough, these are all forms of rejection. Most of these forms of rejection occur when our performance or personal attributes fail to meet the standards of others.

Finding Your Identity in Christ

Finding your identity in Christ is an essential element to enable you to step out to engage in various aspects of life without being preoccupied by the fear of rejection. When your identity has been secured in your relationship with God according to the value that he has assigned to you, it can relieve you from being overly concerned with what others are thinking about you. Mere human beings do not love and accept you on an unconditional basis that God does. Knowing that God loves you has the potential to make an immediate difference in boosting your self-worth, but it may also be necessary to constantly remind yourself of his love until you start thinking of yourself with the same value that God does.

If you have settled it in your heart that your value and self-wroth is based on the eternal value that God has assigned to you, and that the greatest person in all the universe thinks that you are worth dying for, then your fear of rejection will begin to dissipate. You will be able to face situations where others may reject you, but you’ll have peace and be able to focus on each situation without being preoccupied with the pain of rejection. Instead, you’ll be able to let God’s character and the abilities that he’s given you flow freely without being inhibited or overreacting to the risk of rejection.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers

Guilt

Guilt can be a tormentor. No one is perfect, we have all done wrong and everyone has reason to feel guilty over something. As uncomfortable as guilt may seem, it is not always bad. God created us with a conscience that is able to sense right and wrong. When we have a guilty conscience, it serves as a signal that is yelling at us, “Don’t do that again.” Our conscience does have the ability to restrain us from doing things that are destructive when we feel guilt, so guilt can serve a purpose.

Not only can guilt keep us from repeating a wrong behavior, it can help us to actively seek reconciliation by making peace with those that we have wronged. Confessing our wrong actions and making a commitment to actively make an effort to change our actions from wrong to right is a big step in making relationships work. When we admit our wrongs and change our actions, trust is developed and relational bonds can develop. When handle guilt in this manner, the things that we feel guilty about are generally reduced or even eliminated, and we feel spiritually and emotionally healthier.

Even though God means for guilt to move us towards better relationships with others, and to serve as a restraining mechanism to keep us from repeating wrong actions, guilt can also be used in a destructive manner by the devil, by others, and by our own misguided thoughts. There is such thing as false guilt and an overactive conscience.

False Guilt

False guilt can come when our view of right and wrong is faulty or out of balance. There are things that people commonly feel guilty for that they shouldn’t feel about. Rejection that has no reasonable cause can cause false guilt. When a person is rejected, they often look to their own actions as the cause for the rejection. However, the real cause may be that someone else is manifesting intolerance out of a condescending attitude towards other because they want to feel superior. This attitude is often accompanied by finding in others; even when the faults that they point to are not true faults that anyone should feel guilty about.

Over-Responsibility

People can also have feelings of guilt because they feel responsible for more than what they should feel responsible for. There are many good things that any of us can do, but none of us can do all of those things at the same time. There is a limit to how much, how long, how often, and how well any of us can do anything. If we don’t see realistic limits, then it becomes easy to say yes to way more than we can do within a healthy life style, or we may feel as though we should be way better at something than what we have the ability for.

All of this can cause guilt and make us feel as though we are failing to do all that we should be doing. God wants us to have an accurate picture in regard to what we can realistically do with our time, our resources, and our abilities, so that we don’t needlessly suffer from guilt over things that God isn’t holding us responsible for.

Resolving Guilt with God’s Forgiveness

Unresolved guilt is a flow killer. When we have memories, circumstances, unrealistic expectations, and condescending or accusing people that trigger guilt, it’s hard to concentrate on what we are doing and can make us feel unworthy of fully engaging in relationships or things that we need to accomplish. Flow is very hard to attain when guilt keeps interfering with our thoughts and emotions. God is forgiving and wants us to confess our sins to him and others that we may have wronged in order to do away with guilt. He also wants to offer grace to us in order to help us function in healthy manner that is based on realistic expectations given the amount of time, resources, and ability that we have.

If you have ever felt guilt or a sense of unrealistic expectations that were beyond your capacity, then you know the relief that is sensed when guilt is removed. Life and freedom begin to flow when you are released from the dungeon of guilt, so it’s important to address guilt if you are dealing with it.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers

Unrealistic Standards and Expectations

I find it interesting that standards can actually be a part of getting into a positive state of flow. Standards can give you goals that provide a course of action. The actions form a sequence of actions that help you to begin moving and flowing in what you are doing. If you have a vision for how you would like things to turn out, that vision shows you what you want, and it also lets you know what you don’t want; which is basically a standard. As helpful as standards can be for helping you get into a state of flow, they can also be a horrible distraction that hinders the state of flow.

Don’t Let Standards Cause the Fear of Failure

Being in a state of flow means that you are fully immersed within the moment you are in and that your attention has been fully captured by the activity that you are doing. This means you are fully present in that moment without being distracted by thoughts about the past or the future. Standards that help you focus on the moment and give you the next course of action can help you perform and flow better. On the other hand, standards that keep reminding you of how you failed and the consequences of that failure can be a distraction. This problem can cause you to start visualizing past failures and project those failures into what you are currently doing. You may also become preoccupied with future consequences if you were to fail to meet a set of standards. This will only serve to create anxiety and keep you from being able to fully attend to what you are doing in a state of high productive flow.

Unrealistic Performance Standards

Another way in which standards can be a distraction is if you expect to accomplish more during a practice session than what you can truly accomplish. If you are a beginner who has been inspired by an expert performance, and you set out to do what the expert did in your first practice, you will be disappointed and probably think that you’re not talented enough, when the truth is, you just need tons more practice.

Willingness to Practice within Your Ability Level

If you are learning how to play the piano, it may seem painful to play just one note at a time instead of playing a concerto with complex chords and rhythms, but that is the reality of how we learn. You may find it insulting to focus on how to position your feet on the floor when you start learning a jump shot in basketball. You may prefer to start with a pull up jumper from three point range, but the best shooters start with the basics that others often overlook. If your standards are too high, you become distracted with thoughts and activities that are out of your reach instead of being focused on activities that will help you get better at your current skill level. To let your talents and abilities flow at the level you are at, you must be able to fully focus on skills that are prerequisites to achieving the high standards you may be visualizing for yourself in the future.

Having high standards that you want to achieve can motivate you to fully engage in what you are doing, but if you are a beginner or intermediate, those high standards must be seen as a long range goal that will take a long time to accomplish. These high standards must be preceded by more basic standards that will help you to fully engage in a task in a productive manner. Little by little, you master one standard, and take a small step to the next standard, while fully embracing the actions that will move you closer to your long range standards.

 

Overcoming Flow Killers

Non-Productive Comparisons

Sometimes you’ll hear people talk about how bad it is to compare yourself with others. Comparisons can be awful when they are misapplied, but you don’t have to misapply them. Much of what I learned in sports was through comparing. I compared what I was doing with others who were doing it better and it taught me a better way of playing sports. That would be a form a constructive comparison.

Comparisons can also back-fire as it can be similar to setting up unrealistic standards. We can compare ourselves with people that are way ahead of us and feel as though we are way behind where we should be and get discouraged. Instead of fully focusing on the task we are doing, we can subject ourselves to thinking about how much better someone else is, and it can pull us way off course in terms of letting our own abilities flow.

Being Inhibited or Over-reacting

If we are intimidated or inhibited by those who are more advanced than us, we may want to play it safe and only do things that we think are easy. It may feel better to do this than to make a mistake in public if we challenge ourselves with something that is difficult.  We can also strive too far past our true ability by doing what others are doing who are way ahead of us.  This can happen when try to fit in with the ability level of others in order to keep from looking bad.

Comparisons can be a huge distraction that cause us to get preoccupied with how we look to others and prevent us from concentrating on the task at hand. We tend to either pull back or over-do it in order to compensate when we think we are in an unfavorable comparison. It’s a little like being graded on a curve where we are rewarded on the basis of comparisons with others, rather than being rewarded according to a set performance standard that we can be certain about ahead of time.

Comparing Yourself with Yourself when Looking for Improvement

Negative comparisons can stick with a person for life time if they allow themselves be permanently affected by those comparisons. If this happens to a person, they may have the opportunity to engage in an activity that they would otherwise enjoy, but their thoughts are overshadowed with a painful memory unfavorable comparisons that made them look bad. This is when comparing kills the ability to flow in an activity.

The inner drive to work, improve, and enjoy an activity gets squelched by negative thoughts that arise from negative comparisons. It’s better to compare yourself with yourself whenever possible as a means of looking for improvement. If you have improved, then you have succeeded and you should find satisfaction in that. You don’t have control over how well others are performing, but you do have some control over whether or not you improve, so let that be your focus.

All of us will face painful comparisons at times. It may be possible to deal with this by finding a job or a task where we are with others of a similar level of ability. However, it is nearly impossible to create those conditions all of the time. When we find ourselves in conditions where we feel at risk because we compare unfavorably, there must be an intentional effort to let go of those comparisons, and look for improvements within ourselves, because that is what we have control over.