This is part 2 of my blog post on #FamilyInFlow. If you haven’t read part 1, you can find it here.
Is Flow Worth The Risk?
Since pushing the limits with adrenaline-filled activities isn’t always reasonable or desirable for individuals and even more so, for families, how can parents and kids achieve the advantages of flow state while sharing each others company?
Instead of dismissing flow state as not practical for your life and your family because you associate it with thrill seekers and risk takers, you should know 2 things.
- You don’t have to put yourself or your loved ones in harms way at all, or, in some remote wilderness filled with challenging scenarios.
- The payoff from, even brief and limited, flow state exposure can be monumental in learning, personal growth, skill development, self-confidence, harmony and connectedness.
Some Benefits Of Flow State Are:
- Greater Happiness – Much discussion has been focused on the feelings of elation during flow but also the transfer of happiness to everyday life. By generating greater joy through your own power, you are more in control of your moods and less reliant on external sources for happiness.
- Increased Emotional Health – With the incredible stimulation of neurotransmitters that occurs during flow and the resulting increased performance, you gain a deep sense of accomplishment leading to increased self-esteem. Self-esteem, coupled with the experience of focus, creativity, strength, and satisfaction derived from time in flow, just increases more, perpetuating a healthier and healthier sense of self. We know feeling good about yourself is a huge key to success in just about any area of life.
- Better Prepared – With time in flow, comes an increased ability to meet challenges and stress in productive ways. If you have handled challenges well enough to enter a flow state and have a positive outcome, this intuition (I like to call it meta-awareness) has become stronger and more capable. When emergencies and surprises occur, you fluidly slip into productive thoughts and actions – your meta-awareness can almost autopilot you to success.
- Higher Performance – The brain, the endocrine and respiratory systems, account for just some of the physiological reactions that occur in flow but these changes level up productivity, creativity, focus and motivation well after you have left the zone. Some companies create a work environment conducive to entering flow state which leads to greater innovation and team success in the long run.
Measuring brain waves in flow, shows a shift towards a more relaxed brain, capable of great creativity, seeing the big picture, making new connections while also being able to integrate these new concepts and actions. You achieve more, learn better, feel happier, gain more motivation to tackle your next challenge and have more fun doing it.
Doesn’t that sound like something worth our time?
I think we can respect the value of flow for more than just adventure athletes, so here are…
7 Tips To Accessing Flow State As A Family:
- Choose The Right Challenging Task – Since each member of a family has different competency in different areas, finding a task that has adequate individual challenge for each person can be tricky. Instead, approach this slightly differently. Pick a task that challenges the group as a whole, which ensures that even the most competent in the group stretches themselves to reach team success.
A few examples of such a task could be:
A measurably proficient experience of a challenging hike – as a family complete, a 3 mile/ 5 kilometer, hike within an amount of time that creates a challenge with each member being responsible for carrying some supplies such as water, snacks, camera, etc. Further parameters could be added with alternating leaders, capturing photographic testimony to the scope of the challenge.
A deliberate and time completion of a campsite set up – without giving the less experienced and capable an out or token task, collectively setting up an entire campsite where teaching and learning are key to the measure of success and it all needs to happen within a set time. For instance, a 6 year old child can learn how to set up, or help set up a tent, which would be part of the expectations in the goal set out.
Even something as basic as a family effort in cleaning the house – once again, setting times, goals and individually-challenging tasks within a group effort can push a collaborative flow experience.
All these examples create the necessity for the group to achieve measurable goals, being self-reliant while also communicating fluidly with each other.
2. Let Go Of Expectations – Once a task has been determined and measures of success are laid out, constant anxiety about completion and performance will interfere with access to flow. While knowing the goal is very important, allowing the group to be present in the moment, focusing on the task at hand and not being distracted by concerns in the future, offers much greater opportunity to transcend into the zone.
It’s captured in the idea of worrying being a waste of time. When there is a problem and you can’t do anything about it, worrying is useless. If you can do something about it, then do something. Either way worrying doesn’t help and keeps you out of flow.
Try not to nag each other, or obsessively predicate the level of completion. If these urges come, gently push them aside with the notion that focus is the best approach to success, so act accordingly and move forward appropriately. Ask how you can move your role forward and still support everyone else without doing it for them
3. Balance Newness With Comfort – As many travelers can attest, being in a new setting can be enough to feel flow arrive. Trying a new move in an activity that you have achieved proficiency in can also have this result. Often the key to enter flow through new experiences is the added factor of not being completely overwhelmed. The contrasting mix of a new challenge with a sense of confidence, allows you to reach a higher state by protecting your psyche with the underlying knowledge that you have the tools, resources and capacity to figure this out.
Implementing this can be as straightforward as carrying the right supplies, having practiced something similar before, being with others that you trust and recognize as capable.
For example, a couple months ago, we went surfing as a family for the first time. Knowing that my daughters were capable swimmers, had wetsuits on, our car had warm clothes and food in it and that we had chosen the right location/break to tackle this, allowed an amazing flow experience to occur. The fact that our surfing skill levels were not high didn’t prevent us from individually and collectively getting in the zone. I knew they were safe, they knew I was there as backup and confident in the situation and we all were thrilled to be pushing our limits, living in the moment and feeling a timeless connection. I highly recommend this exact activity, if it speaks to you at all.
4. Create The Right Environment – Regardless of the actual environment, eliminating distractions and fostering external cues in helping to achieve flow state can go a long way to improving access. Putting on inspiring music, turning off phones and positioning oneself with a view conducive to a transcendent state, are all effective ways to assist the launch up into the zone. There are examples of writers who clearly set up their workspace with these ideas in mind, as well as other artists.
Often the majesty of nature is a powerful factor in propelling flow forward. Thus, it is no surprise that outdoor adventure athletes are perhaps the most common visitors to flow state.
To increase this is a chance of getting into flow as a family, think carefully about the environment you are in, the potential distractions and the most powerful triggers that will assist each member and the whole to succeed in this endeavor.
5. Properly Fuel For Flow – With more and more research coming out on the effects of nutrition and lifestyle adjustments on performance in all areas, there is great value in looking at what we put into our bodies to help or hinder performance.
Have you ever eaten too much pizza and being faced with the task of being nimble in mind and body? If so, then you probably know already, that pizza is NOT high-performance food. Unless you’re some sort of outlier, or are so exceptionally talented, that fueling your body with pizza barely slows you down in any way, shape or form, you know what I’m talking about.
Now, I have nothing against pizza but if if you’re looking to be the best you can be, then choosing fuel that will allow the body to move like a cheetah and the mind to think with laser focus will lead you to choices that are better than couch potato food.
If you’re hoping to be able to create the right mix of neurotransmitters, have the strength to complete your goals and the resilience to withstand anything from a giant wave to winning at family charades, then adequate and proper nutrition to support entry into flow is key.
I refer to this approach as youthful nutrition and it encourages a lean, strong and pain-free state of being as well as many other benefits for flow and better health. Simply stated it is the approach to nutrition that results in making you look move and feel younger.
There are several strategies to help families support each other in nutritional excellence. This is actually an area that hits very close to home, literally, with myself and my family, due to the fact that we deal with some health issues, challenging food allergies and yet we still expect to be able to do new and wonderful things in life. While I can go into great detail about all the foods, the supplementation and the implementation you can do through nutrition, with respect to this post’s length, I’ll leave that for another time. You can get more details from Bree over here for now.
Trust your own intuition and ask yourself these questions.
What are you eating that slows you down?
And what energizes you?
Take a tally and start to use it strategically before tasks hope to crush like a hero!
6. Physically Prime For Flow – If your body distracts you from your mind, or is the reason you aren’t singing on stage even though your voice of Frank Sinatra, then looking into physical conditioning could be your ticket to level up.
Another aspect so important to getting, and staying, in flow as well as achieving more success is to have a body that does not slow you down. There is some overlap with your nutrition but here it is important for you to have an approach to fitness that energizes instead of exhausts, improves function, and boosts overall wellness by reducing stress, incorporating play and pleasure.
This philosophy of movement I like to call mindful fitness. The concept is to approach conditioning of the body as leading to benefits for cognitive function, mental health and happiness, physical capabilities needed in your real life, and greater enjoyment of being alive.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably overtrain at least once or twice in your life. That most of us aren’t going to perform in the world championships, so pushing our bodies longer and harder with some sort of imaginary skilled test that might never occur, generally results in exhaustion, injury and eventually demotivation. In contrast, getting involved in physical movement that is enjoyable, social and allows our bodies to move in ways that release stress instead of compound it, Will build a more resilient vessel for you and your family to reach flow in.
This conditioning will assist you to not be distracted by the infirmities of a body that has either been neglected or exhausted. What can you do together as a family that is both fun and increases energy in the long run?
Try going on a walk in the park or in a ravine together as a family. Take advantage of the environment, climb a tree, balance on a log, watch your kids and move like them.
7. Mental Conditioning For Flow – Don’t worry you don’t have to remember pi to the 25th decimal place to be mentally ready to reach the zone, but I bet the guys who do have experienced it more than once. While being in flow will benefit both your mental performance and your physical performance, nurturing the right mindset ahead of time will increase your access, frequency and success.
A mind that has developed the ability to focus well, remain aware of the present moment, retain an inner calmness and gravitates towards optimistic outcomes, is much more likely to transcend into the zone, stay there and accomplish great things. When a family supports each other in this type of mental conditioning, there is a compounding effect by hanging out with others with a similar joyful mindset.
Priming your mindset to be more flow accessible can be done with the support of regular meditation, techniques to improve gratitude, awareness of the types of thoughts that slip into your mind and your ability to control them, breathing exercises, and the pursuit of new skills in multiple disciplines. For example, taking up an instrument, learning a new language, doing visual art, or a bunch of other things that aren’t necessarily leading to some specific function in your life.
Don’t overthink it, play with it and enjoy the process.
You probably guess that we can go on and on with greater details each of these areas. I hope that you have gained something from this post that you as an individual and your family, or whatever team you’re part of, can utilize to access flow state more easily, stay there longer and integrate into your life to unleash your superpowers.
Have you experienced flow? Have you experienced flow in a group?
Are any of the seven tips above something you’ve used before?
What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear more in the comments below.
