Neuroscience Nuggets #7: How To Find Your Flow

I’m immersed in what I’m doing. All of my senses are on high-alert. Ideas are bubbling, progress is being made, there's a giddy satisfaction rippling through my body and time is flying by so fast I have to remind myself to come up for air. 

It happens when I’m cooking, writing, playing tennis, and hanging out with friends. 

But most often it happens when I’m coaching.

This inimitable “in the zone” state is called "flow."

Everyone since the dawn of time has experienced it at some point or another, but it wasn’t officially discovered until Hungarian Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who sadly passed away last week) coined the term in 1975. 

Csikszentmihalyi set out to discover how and why people feel enjoyment in their everyday lives. From artists and chess players to leaders and farmers, for years he studied their daily habits and activities, trying to find that *exact* moment when people feel totally in synch with whatever they’re doing without needing any external motivation to do so.

His research landed on "flow," the moment in time when interest and skill are in perfect harmony, when you feel intrinsic joy and purpose without extreme effort. 

Csikszentmihalyi defines "flow" as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

What's amazing about "flow" (and which leads us to our neuroscience nugget today) is what happens in the brain when you’re in it. Or better yet, what doesn’t happening in the brain.

Since "flow" occurs in the sweet spot between arousal (aka challenge) and control (aka skill), your brain is not experiencing the anxiety of trying to accomplish something beyond its reach, nor is it wandering aimlessly looking for some sort of internal or external distraction. 

Your brain’s attention is so focused on what it's doing that anything unrelated to the task at hand, including self-consciousness, self-doubt, and negative self-speak, is literally squeezed out of the equation. 

When in "flow," “existence is temporarily suspended,” says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his must-watch Ted Talk, so much so that your doubts, hunger, fatigue, and even your kids can’t seem to shake you out of what you’re doing. 

This is what I love most about "flow": 

1. Being in "flow" is deeply personal, non-hierarchical and non-discriminatory. You can feel like Beyoncé at Coachella even when you’re setting a table for your dinner guests, creating spreadsheets for your clients or doing a workshop on Zoom.

2. "Flow" is neither about forcing yourself out of our comfort zone to prove your self-worth, nor about avoiding risks at all costs. It's about the sweet spot in-between stretch and security. 

3. You can find meaning—and "flow"—in all types of professions. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon or the head of NGO to feel a joyful purpose in life. 

So what are the take-aways here?

• We need both arousal (aka challenge) and control (aka skill) to make "flow" happen. It’s that very special space where our challenges and our skills dance together like Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey .
  

• If you're experiencing too much overwhelm at a given task, think about what practical skills you could hone to rise to the occasion (like those steamy nights of "practice" between Swayze and Grey).
  

• And if your tasks are feeling pretty stale around the edges, find a way to put your skills to a stretchy challenge, like Swayze teaching a rhythmless teenager how to dance like a pro.

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Neuroscience Nuggets #6: The Progress Loop

I had a misty-eyed “goodbye for now” send off recently with a client who just wrapped up her coaching program with me. 

We went through the coaching goals created in our first sessions together, celebrating them line by line and shrieking at times because many of her wilful predictions came true in larger-than-expected ways. 

Like her goal to grow deeper in her field as a writer and journalist, develop and share her unique perspective on her subject matter with a wider audience. 

At the time she wrote that goal, the thought of speaking in public literally made her queasy. 

But guess what, not only has she been interviewed on podcasts, she just launched her own podcast and signed with a NYC literary agent who’s working with her on her first book proposal.

But how did she get there? How did she suddenly become so confident, scoring agents, speaking gigs and launching podcasts?

Those are all great questions, and they lead me to this week’s neuroscience nugget:

The common misconception is that in order to launch a new project, say the hard thing, or stand up for a cause, you first need to hit the “confidence store” to stock up on motivation like a jumbo pack of toilet paper before a pandemic. 

But the neuroscience shows that motivation and confidence are generated because of action, not before it. 

We need to first do the thing in order to reap the benefits of feeling confident and motivated. 

It’s our brain’s reward response for experiencing success at a particular task. 

But how can we hack the system so that we know we’ll be successful at a task before we do it?

The simplest way to do that is to break our goals down into small, 100% achievable steps that we know we can’t fail at.


The process is called the progress loop, or The Progress Principle, a concept coined by authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer during their research into the forward momentum of meaningful work. 

With each new small success, your brains says “way to go, you did it!” by creating a neurotransmitter called Dopamine that makes you feel motivated and empowered to go after the next small challenge on your list. 

For my client, Paige McClanahan, the progress loop kicked off when she said yes to a speaking opportunity even though the thought of doing it made her want to vomit. 

So, the first task was something she knew she could succeed at: just say yes to the opportunity. 

“I knew if I said no it would be out of fear,” she explains. “It was saying yes that led to the next step of growth. It wasn’t perfect, but in a sense that was the most motivating thing about it. The overriding emotion was confidence that I could do it better the next time. And then, all of the sudden, the idea for a podcast came to me fully-formed.”

“The Better Travel Podcast,” which Paige launched this week, never would have seen the day had she not begun the progress loop by simply saying yes to an opportunity. 

So, now here are some questions for you:

1. What important personal or professional goal is just so damn huge that your brain can’t muster the motivation to go after it?

2. How could you break that goal down into totally achievable bite-size chunks that you know you can succeed?

3. What’s the easiest first step you can take to kick off the progress loop and get your brain’s reward response working on your behalf?

Neuroscience Nuggets #3: Know Your Body Budget

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but your brain couldn't care less if you have a meaningful job, make a positive impact, or feel inspired daily.

It's got one main subject on its mind: to keep you alive and well. Basta! 

The brain's #1 job is to regulate your body’s energy so that you can grow, survive and sow your seeds. This is called allostasis, or the body budget. 

Think of your brain as a brilliant (albeit not-so-fun) bank account manager. She knows (even when you try to convince her otherwise) the amount of money coming in and out of your accounts at all times. She has exclusive analytics and back-end prediction algorithms that can anticipate and satisfy your spending needs based on your past experiences in order to keep you on track and out of trouble. 

The way she works her magic is by:

1. Perceiving the sensations within your body (which she reads without your conscious awareness).

2. Perceiving the information from the outside world via your skin, your eyes, your ears, etc.

3. Interpreting your internal and external worlds to decide the best way to allocate your body’s energy to keep you alive based on your past experiences.

While she's fussing over all of this data, you, my friend, are doing normal life things that may strain your body’s budget in small and big ways: filling your to-do lists will impossible tasks, meeting up with friends four nights in a row for drinks, bing-watching Netflix series and going to bed each night after midnight, eating take-out because you have no time to cook, feeding yourself a steady stream of anxiety-producing news. Sound familiar?

Your day-to-day habits can take a toll on your body budget, resulting in a distressed bank manager who can resort to extreme behaviour to get your attention (like burning out, having a panic attack, lashing out at your kids at the end of an exhausting week).

But, more often than not, she’ll just send out a more subtle vibe or outlook on life. 

In scientific terms, this is called “affect.” In common language, it’s called mood and it’s the energetic budget our brain is working with. 

Affect is the general sense of feeling you experience throughout your day. It’s much simpler than an emotion and is based on the intersecting levels of two general feelings: pleasantness (aka valence) and intensity (aka arousal).


The combinations of high to low valence and high to low arousal look like this: 

When your body budget is unbalanced, it colors your mood. But a general bad feeling doesn’t always mean that something major is wrong (e.g. Like you need to leave your life and move to Brazil). It could mean that, or it may simply mean that you are taxing your body budget. 

What's the best way to maintain your body budget and positively influence your mood and energy? Healthy diet, exercise and optimal sleep are the three main ingredients to a balanced body budget. 


So, what's the moral of the story then? Before you jump to conclusions about what's wrong with humanity, or make big life decisions, you might want to first stop and look at your body budget. Are you hungry? Exhausted? When did you last get some exercise?


These very basic factors have HUGE implications on our moods, and therefore on everything. 

Neuroscience Nuggets #2: Fantasy vs Visualization

I use images and visualization regularly in my coaching and workshops. So naturally I was thrilled to hear that my neuroscience program devoted a lesson to visualization.


But when my teacher prefaced the class by saying there was a right and very wrong way to use it, my internal doubting alarm went off.

"Yikes," I thought! "What if I’ve been doing something wrong? What if scientists scoff at it? What if it's a just a feel-good technique that doesn't really move the needle?"  

First off, reader, we can both breathe a sigh of relief. Visualization isn't going anywhere in my practice. Au contraire, it's about to get very next level. 

But let's back up the tape and get some terms straight before I tell you how: 

• Visualization is using your imagination to conjure up a future scenario that you can see in sharp detail in your mind’s eye, and even feel in your body.
  

• It can be a very powerful tool when you need to get creative, dream big, try on different versions of the life you'd like to live, and see what feels right!
  

• It can also motivate you to accomplish something super hard, messy, and meaningful (e.g. feeling the joy and relief of giving birth without an epidural; hearing your name called at the graduation ceremony after four grueling years of studying; feeling the warm, smug smile on your face after finally beating your son at tennis).
  

BUT, and this is a very important BUT, if you don’t back those delicious images up by also visualizing the process of getting to your goal, the vision simply stays a fantasy. 

According to my professor, Dr Irena O’Brien, "Fantasies can actually hinder success because they embellish future events regardless of past performance and the probability of future occurrences. Therefore, they fail to be a solid basis for acting." 

When you visualize the steps you need to take to move yourself along your path, however, you not only feel less anxious and more confident about what you need to do, you make it much more likely to achieve your goal.

By visualizing the process as opposed to just the result, you’re giving your brain a practical road map to understand and anticipate the resources needed to move you forward.

So, in a nutshell, if you want to go after something specific, you can’t just visualize the end-game, you also need to: 

• Visualize the process to get there.

• Be sure to include any potential internal or external roadblocks or temptations you might encounter along the way.

• Then come up with a plan to overcome those road blocks, or better yet, create an environment that helps you avoid them entirely (more on that in the next neuroscience nugget newsletter).

Photo courtesy Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/aPNE3B0WHTM

Neuroscience Nuggets #1: Vanilla Yogurt Victory

Since the third lockdown ended in France last month it feels like the hose has come off the hydrant. All of my pending projects are suddenly “on! “and coming at me full blast. 

I’m not complaining, I’m excited about them all, especially the neuroscience for coaches certificate program that I’m taking at  The Neuroscience School

This program is quite literally BLOWING. MY. MIND.

I’m dying to spill everything I’ve learned so far out on this page but I’ll start with this seminal nugget:

Neuroplastic changes within our brains translate into concrete behavioral changes in our daily decisions and actions. And it goes both ways. The more you practice and perpetuate certain behaviors, the deeper and faster the grooves in the brain become to support them.

As a coach, my job is to help my clients define and achieve their goals. And the gold standard to see if the brain has re-organized itself to achieve those goals is to look at how our behaviors have changed over a period of time.

Which takes me to the victory of vanilla yogurt.

Around mid-way through my coaching program with my clients I do a recap session to inventory every single thing that has changed or shifted in my client’s life since we began together.

Every item counts. Even the smallest, seemingly-random thing is relevant. Like a change of haircut. A new musical obsession. A shift in diet. 

These may seem insignificant when viewed on their own, but when you connect their dots together you can start to see some emerging themes appear—evidence that the neural pathways are starting to shift and strengthen inside the brain. 

Recently when taking inventory with one of my clients she told me she had started eating vanilla yogurt after a two-decade ban on that yummy yummy.

As a child, vanilla yogurt was her jam. She adored it. But as she grew older she told herself that eating it didn’t fit the rational, cerebral, mature habits associated with the serious adult she needed to become personally and professionally. 

Vanilla yogurt was the embodiment of a certain playfulness and joy she believed didn’t have its place in adulthood.  

She would still buy it at the supermarket and offer it to her four kids for dessert, but she would never think of eating it herself. That’s just not what adults do. 

But as our discussions around the value of playfulness, humor and joy in her life unfolded, her relationship to the yogurt changed too. And she allowed herself to eat a small pot of vanilla yogurt whenever she felt like it. 

For my client, the yogurt is much more than fragranced, sweetened, bacterially-fermented milk: it’s proof of a perceptual and behavioral shift towards creating and celebrating small, simple pleasures in life. 

It’s about assigning value to joy. 

And making space for it daily. 

Not in a six months or a year, but right now. 

In addition to the vanilla yogurt, she’s also buying bouquets of flowers at the market each week for no specific occasion, she’s starting to sculpt again, she’s dancing with her kids, she’s cracking more jokes at the dinner table.

And all of these changes are training her brain to find even bigger ways to bring joy into her life, as well as her career. 

What vanilla yogurt behavior changes are brining you closer to your goals?