Quotes About Flow

Danny Way explains: "It's either find the zone or suffer the consequences—there's no other choice available.

Every good athlete can find the flow," continues Pastrana, "but it's what you do with it that makes you great. If you consistently use that state to do the impossible, you get confident in your ability to do the impossible. You begin to expect it. That's why we're seeing so much progression in action sports today. It's the natural result of a whole lot of people starting to expect the impossible.

Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.

How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors—activities packed with flow triggers—because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like "career" or "children"?

We pay to watch, read, or be in the presence of a flow experience. If quantified, you'd find it's a major chunk of the GDP.

Temple University sports psychologist Michael Sachs, who made an extensive study of these states, summed this up nicely: "Every gold medal or world championship that's ever been won, most likely, we now know, there's a flow state behind the victory.

This isn't just your mind paying more attention—suddenly your entire body is paying attention. When this happens, it's outside our conscious capabilities. There are no words. Our language becomes that of the river. All the features of the river speak to you and you to them through motion. There is tension, threat, there is joy and release, and overall, a deep, deep sense of flow. You are literally part of the flow of the world.

He defined the state as "being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The ego falls away. Time flies. 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.

Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations. That, my friends, is the real art of impossible.

transient hypofrontality removes our sense of self. With parts of the prefrontal cortex deactivated, there's no risk assessor, future predictor, or inner critic around to monitor the situation. The normal safety measures kept in place by the conscious mind are no longer. This is another reason why flow states significantly enhance performance: when the "self" disappears, it takes many of our limits along for the ride.

And for flow junkies who get their fix through action sports, this has always been the dark secret. Ecstasis only arises when attention is fully focused in the present moment.

I've gotten really good at pulling the veil down," says Way, "at camouflaging reality, locking out my conscious mind and riding my focus into the zone.

Flow tends to be the psychic signature of world-class performance and paradigm-shifting breakthroughs

This means flow packs a double punch: it doesn't just increase our decision-making abilities—it increases our creative decision-making abilities. Dramatically.

When doing what we most love transforms us into the best possible version of ourselves and that version hints at even greater future possibilities, the urge to explore those possibilities becomes feverish compulsion. Intrinsic motivation goes through the roof. Thus flow becomes an alternative path to mastery, sans the misery.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his masterwork, Creativity.

Risk heightens focus and flow follows focus. This means that the fight-or-flight response primes the body—chemically and psychologically—for the flow state. Athletes report moving through one to get to the other.

Training in high-stress situations increases what psychologists call "situational awareness." Defined as the ability to absorb information accurately, assess it calmly, and respond appropriately, situational awareness is essentially the ability to keep cool when all hell breaks loose. Because attention and pattern recognition are so heightened by flow, training in the state radically increases situational awareness.

When you're pushing the limits of ultimate human performance, the choice is stark: it's flow or die.

psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.

This is another reason why flow states significantly enhance performance: when the "self" disappears, it takes many of our limits along for the ride.

Those highlight moments forever seared in your memory: that too is group flow in action.

Flow may be the biggest neurochemical cocktail of all. The state appears to blend all six of the brain's major pleasure chemicals and may be one of the few times you get all six at once. This potent mix explains why people describe flow as their "favorite experience," while psychologists refer to it as "the source code of intrinsic motivation.

In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof.