Finding Flow -Day 3
Today’s topic is one of the most important concepts to understand to live a fulfilled life. You see I believe we are all creative beings. Which is why it pains me when I hear people say “I’m just not creative”. It’s not a lack of creative thinking for these people, it’s a matter of finding the right way to express the creativity.
Before we go further we need to talk about unlearning. This could be an entire subject on its own, but for now I want you to understand that you were born into a cult. A cult of your parents beliefs, social structures from you environment, impressions from teachers and so on. And in order to be your authentic self you need to break through the belief systems holding you back.
This isn’t all bad, but without even knowing it you were born with a bias in a specific category. Which led to how you understand your identity and the person you’ve become. If your family continually told you that you were lazy over and over, then it’s likely that you believe you are a lazy person. The truth is the type of person you are is up to you!
This is where the unlearning comes in, you see these belief systems place on you are not who you are it’s what you learned and if you learned it, you can unlearn it!
Being creative isn’t about traditional arts like painting and drawing. It’s about full self expression. Which could look like athletics, creating excel spreadsheets or writing to name a few. And when we find those things that allow us to full express ourselves we enter a state of consciousness known as “flow”.
Positive psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
Many athletes refer to this as “in the zone”. It’s those games where basketball players drop 60 points and after the game when being interviewed they can’t even remember. It’s the moment when time stops and you can just feel, while fully locked in and present. It’s when our best work comes out because we are displaying our full expression of creativity.
Flow is found when passion and skill are combined. It’s when we do our best work. The beautiful things is that it’s about doing what makes us come alive and giving back the most to society.
So find what makes you come alive and go after it with everything you have because the greatest gift you can give the world is to be unapologetically & authentically yourself.
