Life’s getting increasingly complex. I have many days where I feel fearful about the future. In South Africa, many things are exceptionally unstable. Many things that happen are out of our control too. But there are certain things that are not out of our control. These are the things that I come back to again and again. These are things that centre me. Things that strengthen my sense of agency. Things that help me access more flow in my life.
I really judge the quality of an activity on if it aids flow state or not. Many activities, like driving in traffic, for example, doesn’t aid flow and can actually make us quite agitated. But there are things that we can do daily to cultivate more flow.
Many of my own practices are things that help me to access more flow in my life. Some of these practices (like mediation) can put me into a state of flow, others don’t necessarily put me into flow, but assists future flow. This is especially true for emotional processing—it’s difficult in the moment, but it clears the way for future creativity. If I’m unburdened from difficult emotions, I can write. (Here’s a related post.) This is true for excessive mental noise too. Flow state is a delicate thing—like a little bird. It’s subtle and soft and if you are having arguments inside your head about how certain systems are collapsing, you can’t access that state. The mind needs to be silenced first—at least to some degree.
When we have this singular intention of maximising the time we spend in flow, life gets simpler. We don’t have to think about ten things that we really should be doing—we can just think of one or two things that bring us joy and calm. Also, when we access flow regularly, things don’t seem so threatening and out of control any more. Many things are out of our control. True. But how much time we spend in flow is not. Flow state is at least somewhat in our control. We can’t necessarily say, “I want to be in flow for x amount of hours,” and let it be so. But we can show up for things that aid flow. We can show up for activities that brighten our day.
So, if I was dishing out advice, I would say: Find things that helps you access flow. It doesn’t have to be meditation. It can be swimming. It can be drawing. Whatever. Try to maximise the time you spend in flow state daily.