“Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Have you ever gotten so lost in a project, an activity, in conversation, that you have no idea where the time went, where you are, what even just happened, nothing else seemed to matter because the experience itself was enjoyable, and kept “flowing”, it was like you were in another state of being…
You were in flow state.
Every athlete (and really every persons) goal is to experiences more flow. Athletes who describe their best performance , describe being in this state.
“From a quality of life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.” – Steven Kotler
Characteristics of flow state:
- Effortless and ease
- Focused attention and concentration
- Loss of self consciousness (actions and awareness are merged)
- Distorted sense of time (lose sense of time or things speed up/slow down)
- Challenge level matches skill level
- Clarity of goals with instant feedback
- The experience is intrinsically rewarding (the activity itself is what satisfies and rewards you)
- Feeling of control over the task
If FLOW is what top athletes experience during their best performances… athletes and coaches … How can you create activities and goals elicit a state of FLOW…
What we should be asking is: What do I do, say, or believe that takes away from me experiencing flow? What do I say or do that might be taking my players or my teammates out of a state of flow?
**Note: The next paragraphs is just me “thinking out loud…” about how we can maybe do things different in the sports world.
A flow state involves a sense of “effortless and ease.” This to me goes against the “we need to struggle our way to success! go harder, try harder, be all jacked up all the time” old school thought process. When in reality, the goal is to create a perfect balance between relaxation and focus that research has found taking place while in flow state. We need just enough arousal from the sympathetic nervous system (that fight or flight response) to focus, while simultaneously engaging the opposite, your parasympathetic system (rest, relax, digest response) to feel at ease. Coaches, players, teammates have a sense when a teammate or player needs a little pumping up, and when they need a little calming down.
Flow state always happens with a loss of self consciousness… aka we stop thinking about ourselves. Yet somehow coaches and teammates try to “help” players by getting them to focus on themselves more especially during the heat of the moment of a game. Want to help a teammate or player during a game, give them action oriented things to do outside of focusing on their own self. For example instead of during a game saying to a specific player: “you are really sucking out there… look at YOUR stats… why is your body language bad, etc.” If flow happens when we think of ourself less, why, during games, are we pointing the athlete inward toward themselves more? Just a thought.
Distorted sense of time. This is reminds me of anytime I engage in an activity fully. We all know the feeling of when we lose time! Maybe you all can help me out with this one, but my first thought goes to having less time oriented drills, and more challenging task completion drills. No idea. But for everyday life it reminds me of putting the phone down, and creating more time and space to get lost with people we love, doing things we love. For example, did your best conversations happen when you only had a quick 20 minute break for a coffee and chat with a friend, and had to keep checking the time?
Challenge level matches skill level, clarity of goals, and instant feedback. When it comes to playing with team sports, a clear system that can become automatic can really help team and individual flow. Nothing kills my flow more than confusion on the court. When it comes to instant feedback, I think sport and music has so much potential for flow. You play a note, the feedback is instantly what you hear. You shoot the ball, and immediate feedback is if the ball goes in or not. And challenge level… anyone try a sport they suck at or is too challenging? Not fun. Make everything challenging enough to elicit an excitement to try again right after failure, because you know it’s within your skill level to succeed, or you felt just a slight sense of improvement that it left you hungry for more.
Feeling of control over a task… for me, here is when the player/coach conflict comes into play. If we all want to experience flow (players and coaches) and control is needed for flow state, then we need to balance out the control. Flow killer 101 is an overly controlling coach. One that stops every single play, gives too many rules (I had a coach give me a 1-2 dribble rule for example), and leaves no autonomy for the players to feel they can take control and ownership over their success. This might be part of the problem with playing time issues. The less minutes you get, the less feeling of control you have over the wins and loses. I rarely had a game I was in flow state that I didn’t play at least half of the game. But I also experience flow while watching a game (on the bench or in the stands). Unlike what we think, this pleasurable experience of flow CAN be experienced as a bench player too. How can we still feel a sense of involvement and control while on the bench? For me, it takes merging with the activity, taking my mind of myself, and doing whatever I can to encourage and help my teammates.
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