​In my previous blog I talked about the power of using mental imagery to help create a picture of how things could be different in an area of your life where you are feeling stuck or unfulfilled.

The unconscious mind can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined.  So mentally rehearsing each step towards a new conscious reality, as if it were a lived experience – what we will be seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, tasting and touching, inviting all emotions associated with each step – can help the brain believe it is already a well-trodden path, a familiar pattern of behaviour and not something to be resisted.

We can then create a new way of being (a new neural pathway) in line with what we want rather than what we’ve inherited or learnt to be our reality.

“Neurons that fire together, wire together.” – Donald Hebb.

So what might help you maintain the motivation to consistently practice new ways of being?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory describes a state of flow as “one of those moments where you get so caught up in what you’re doing that time seems to fly by. Or when you’re working on something, and it just happens so naturally and easily and you can be astoundingly productive, spending hours working and it feels like minutes”.

Csikszentmihalyi’s model explains to access a state of flow your ‘task’ needs to present a high level of challenge to you and you need to have a high level of skill, or belief in your ability to do the task.  When the challenge is high and the skill or belief in the skill is low then anxiety is likely to kick in.  When the challenge is low and the skill is high relaxation and boredom will prevail.  And when the challenge and skills are low apathy will take over.

When we allow ourselves to ‘run’ on automatic (unconscious), familiar patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviour we are not exposing ourselves to novel experiences or challenging ourselves.  Consciously choosing to control where we focus our attention and how we focus our attention can help us be in the top right hand corner of the model and, ultimately access a happy and healthy state of mind.

A talk I recently attended given by Charlie Unwin, a Performance Psychologist and Olympian, reinforced to me that using a mental image of who we want to be and what we want in our life as a direction of travel, rather than a destination, can help detach us from the need to achieve that outcome.  Setting goals to access a Flow state can help reduce the emotional attachment to achieving the outcome and the fear, judgement or a lack of control that could be associated with that.

With that in mind, the irony of sitting down to write a blog about Flow, whilst trying to access a state of Flow in order to write it, was not lost on me!

The new pattern of behaviour I am rehearsing (both mentally and physically) are the steps I take to access that state and stay in the moment.  My steps are to create the time and space in my day, set up my quiet, uninterrupted environment (with my slippers on ), have a freshly made cup of coffee on my desk, my headphones in my ears, listening to white-noise and set a timer to create a self-imposed deadline.

And when I focussed on accessing Flow and started to write, staying in the moment without distractions, without trying to finish the blog, this process enabled me to finish my blog!

In what types of situations is focussing on the outcome sabotaging your ability to perform at your best?  What goals could you set yourself to access a state of Flow, which is more likely to help you achieve the outcome you want?