Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi the psychologist credited with first coining the term 'flow' was referring to a hyper concentrated state of being that requires complete and undivided attention to an activity. This level of focus and attention actually allows one to become mentally unaware of the passing of time and instead focus all attention and mental energy to the task at hand.
So what does flow mean for me and how have I been able to experience it? The first time I remember slipping into flow I was probably no more than 7 or 8 years old. Growing up my brother and I would often spend whole days learning and choreographing dances and making up our own partner dance routines. We could easily spend up to 5 hours a day coming up with dances to perform for our parents in our furniture crowded living room and, although the bigger question in this scenario is why were we even allowed to spend that much time on any one thing, the truth is that I didn't ever feel the passing of time in those hours. Just the fluidity that came from creating something visually representative and entering a state of flow.
When my brother became "too cool" to spend 5 hours on weekends dancing with his younger sister, I turned to song and poetry writing and experienced a flow all my own. I remember my marble composition notebook and the leather cover I had found in a box of my dad's old things in his home office. I remember the smell of the leather and the zipping sound the cover would make every time I opened it to sit down and right a new poem. Happiness, sadness, anger, confusion, I turned to the notebook to write my thoughts and feelings down and was always shocked when, hours later, one thing had led to another and I had written a full 3 page poem effortlessly.
And then came the music. When I was around 10 or 11 years old I remember rewriting the song lyrics to a Colbie Caillat song on the back of a lined index card. I remember how the words tumbled out of me in what seemed like an effortless procession, but again the passing of time had escaped me and almost 2 hours had gone by before I had finished the song. But that feeling of creating, of applying every molecule of my attention to what I was doing was a habit so easily stolen away from me once I entered the throws of high school. In the midst assigned readings and math and chemistry homework, the feeling of flow and the habit of concentration left me. The rise of social media impacted me before the age of even 15 and I remember the hungry way I used to seek out scrolling through Facebook or Instagram just to distract my mind away from focus.
And suddenly the goal was no longer to feel in effortless harmony with focus, but rather to rage against it. I stopped seeking out flow and replaced concentration with things like 15 seconds viral Vines, 10 minute beauty routines, and 30 minute story time videos that did nothing for me, but further butcher my mind's ability to function at 100%. Flow was a feeling that truly evaded me until I got to college and decided to major in journalism. As much as I would love to say it's public education that saved my passion and creativity, it's actually what I did with my time outside of formal journalism study that benefitted me the most.
When I moved to university I decided to start my own YouTube channel. I remember turning on the camera and seeing the red recording button blinking as I sat cross legged on my dorm room floor, tears in my eyes and ready to talk about my mental health battles since I had started college. Although the feeling of spilling something out to a room full of no one and knowing I was going to cast the message into the depths of the world wide inter webs was a peaceful paradox that strangely made me feel like I was sharing my business with no one and everyone at the exact same moment, the real experience came from editing my videos.
There's something about entering the monochromatic landscapes of video editing software. Opening up an editing program has always made me feel like I'm entering and dark but dimly lit room with tons of tools at the touch of my hand and working my way out of it is just a matter of knowing how to construct a ladder back out into the light. You pick up a hammer and nail and BOOM you have the first rung of your ladder or the introduction to your video and suddenly things start to unfold before you faster and faster until you're seeing images you haven't produced yet come into focus in your mind's eye and words you haven't yet spoken fill your head. You're feeling like all of this is happening easily and effortlessly yet your heart beat quickens and slows like you're running a marathon. You've set your pace for the uphills and you allow your body to take over and propel you through the downhills. You're ebbing, but most importantly you're flowing.
Sitting down and allowing words and visions of what I create is like a meditation. It's like my ego goes somewhere else while my mind goes to work. When I felt this feeling after 4 long years of dormancy it was like waking up and realizing I'd trapped myself in a labrynth of my own creation. I had put myself there, but only I knew the way out. And so after years of being guided by high rise blank walls always blindly directing my way forward I could suddenly see everything in front of me splayed out like a lush green field that just made me want to run.
In my adult life...or as I like to call it, my test-run adult life...I am hungry for flow in all ways that I can have it. I have realized that being a creative keeps you in a perpetual state of hunger and mental activity, but the irony is that the only way to satiate oneself is to tune out the part of the self that says "I, I, I" and tune in to something language doesn't truly have a name for. People who experience flow on a normal basis describe higher levels of personal well being, satisfaction, and overall happiness. And I'm not a scientist, but if I had to say why this is, I'd say it's because truthfully every human being is part of the delicate, but thickly woven fabric of the universe and in these moments of flow we tap into a mental network of resources that allow us to make tangible what hangs in the unseen world. Flow is the process of closing the eyes of your ego and reaching into existence to bring things forth into the physical realm. And the beautiful thing about it is that each person is a medium to do it differently.
So today I encourage you to create something just for the sake of doing it and see what happens when you shut mind off long enough to experience flow.