Jamie has nailed it in terms of describing the benefits of being in Flow state. However, he misses a vital point. Flow isn't the cause of high performance as he implied. The moment we try to establish a causality between certain performance state and flow, we lose the ability to 'achieve' flow state because it isn't an ability or skill. Flow is the underlying, foundational state at which we naturally exist. That is why we don't or can't achieve flow state at whim but rather discover it through the practice of abandonment. It occurs when we dissociate the performance outcome from simply being. It occurs when we throw away our expectation about future and intensely focus on being. In another words, we are already in flow state. We just gotta throw away the things that cloud our consciousness to expose our true natural state. And, the best way to do that is focus on being - right here, right now.
It does indeed--some of the science suggest slightly different neurological profiles for meditation vs. flow-in-action, but many of the sticking points for practice, and for getting out of regular waking state and into those places, share a lot of overlap!
It's physically impossible to be in 'flow' permanently. The neurotransmitters your body is able to supply for each stage of flow are finite. They deplete back to homeostasis. You can 'hack' the neurotransmitters using nootropics to a certain degree. But you can take this only so far. The closest you'll get to experiencing flow more often is learning what Joshua mentioned above. But it takes dedication and a lot of practice.
Howard Thurman: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." awesome quote.
Flow is ... 1) Selfless It silences our inner critic. During flow state our prefrontal cortex goes offline. We fully focus on the activity at hands without observing emotions. 2) Effortless It accelerates the path to mastery. Through deeper focus and less inner criticisms people learn faster in a flow state. One experiment showed a 230% increase in learning speed. 3) Timeless It's hackable. We don't experience time when we're in the flow. It can go faster or slower. Work performance can multiply by 5 during flow making people "work 5 x faster". Find your passion, avoid distractions and focus on the moment to get a chance at experiencing flow.
Flow state is meditation in movement and meditation is flow state in stillness. If you learn to reach flow in stillness, than any action will flow. Meditation will rewire your brain to access flow more readily, you will know how. If you want to DO, you must first BE. Mindfulness meditation is excellent, the breath is always present, eventually so will your mind.
This is it, this is where it's at, I've experienced this flow in short lived bursts, and just know if i can trigger it at will, all will become possible!
If your soul is hungry there is an answer:“On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
I've been researching flow state for my final year dissertation. Pouring through academic journals over the past month. These guys are entrepreneurs. They have a great marketing team, a great design team and make a lot of big claims and assumptions, not even theory, merely hypothesise with no scientific back up, it's insane! What they "add" to traditional flow theory is nothing more that a stupidly big price tag. See them more as modern day self-help guru's similar to Tony Robbins. Just know that everything they say that's worthwhile reading can be found in a book written in the 70's (FLOW), anything else they say is either opinion or else just utter nonsense.
markozam - in the 70's they don't have sophisticated instruments to measured what's going on inside our brain and body. I agreed with you that they are marketing a product here. But not all of what they said about the changes that go in our brain in term of brain waves and neurochemicals and in our body in term of hormones are utter nonsense. Actually they made a very important connect to how we can be healthy in mind and body by accessing this flow state. Something that the book FLOW does not said.
So awesome to hear your story and description of flow state...I am fascinated by deliberate and naturally occurring states of high efficiency and effectiveness. Thank you!
If you're well-versed in anything, just sit down and start doing it. The flew state may or may not come according to how deeply you're set in to your activity (and how much you truly enjoy it).
i don’t think it requires high performance activity, otherwise it is limited to elite performers, performances and achievers… =^..^= i feel it when absorbed in any activity that allows time to vanish as a construct… that part of my mindbrain starts flying the bus for a change… i used to count on it with physical activity but after crippling rheumatoid arthritis i enjoy reaching there with painting, chess puzzles, picking up a camera after sipping cannabis, listening to, “the expanse”, audiobook series on a bench in my bamboo grove… daily life in my ikigai cat sanctuary…
He lost you, or you lost yourself? lol Sounds like you got lost because of attention deficiency. Anyway, the man's a genius. Lookup the recent presentation he gave @google with *Steven Kotler*.
Very interesting! I can see where this could be extremely useful for artists! I make jewelry and am always looking for ways to tap into my creativity! I subscribed!
12:20 Albert Einstein used to Look at the Clouds. ( Relaxation to alpha or, theta state intermittently as n when needed is must for High Productivity.) Real Learning comes during Delta Sleep.
Wheal is wrong. Flow, as defined by M. Csikszentmalyi, who is oddly not mentioned in this talk, defined flow as the result of a matching of skill and challenge. This corresponds to a slight moment to moment uncertainty in achieving a desired goal, and this always corresponds to the release of the neuro-modulator dopamine. And Wheal's emphasis on 'brain waves' has nothing to do with the affective experience of flow. The release of the neuro-modulator dopamine occurs when an individual experiences or anticipates the perception of positive unpredicted events. Dopamine fixes attention, stimulates learning, and is subjectively felt as a feeling of energy, arousal, timelessness, but not ironically of pleasure. Dopamine increases the momentary value or decision utility of behavior. If that moment to moment behavior conforms to its predicted utility or ending value, this attentive focus will be correlated with a state of relaxation that in turn elicits the release of endogenous opioids that are reflected in a feeling of pleasure. (For example, a creative artist working on a painting may feel energized and pleasurable in his activity) On the other hand, if the dopamine induced change in the decision utility of behavior is not coherent with the future or predicted utility of behavior, as in distraction due to novel but useless alternatives (e.g. accessing social media while on the job), then neuro-muscular activation or muscular attention will occur and result in pain, opioid release will stop, and the individual will report a subject state of unhappiness. Prediction: the behavior of keeping focused on task is the primary independent measure for happiness. Proof: Simply poll people randomly during that the course of their days, and those who are focused will feel happy and content, and those who are distracted will feel unhappy and discontented. This is exactly what the psychologist Matt Killingsworth did with over 15000 subjects who were polled randomly during various moments of their days. His discussion of his results are in the TED talk below. www.ted.com/talks/matt_killingsworth_want_to_be_happier_stay_in_the_moment?language=en And of course, my longer explanation here. www.scribd.com/doc/284056765/The-Book-of-Rest-The-Odd-Psychology-of-Doing-Nothing
+AJ Marr Would that explain why the surfers get up so early and get into their sandy wetsuits because they anticipate the feeling of flow or release of dopamine when they ride those waves?
AJ Marr Wheal and his 'research partner' (here I use the term research loosely as theirs is a misinterpretation of various pieces of curated information that proves their theories) are wrong- and pitching theories to access flow that are wrong. Like you, I've researched the elements of 'flow' including the unique balance of natural chemicals that bathe body and brain during true flow states- as identified by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, the 'founder' of flow whose work is quoted here and who is not identified. You are right- Wheal and Kotler are wrong.
@@DoctorPamBrill Where exactly are they wrong? They seem to be basing their research fundamentally on Csikszentmihalyi's work, who is often mentioned in their texts and interviews of course, if not in this particular clip. Skill / challenge level is a vital component of flow, of course, and Wheal definitely doesn't deny that. Just confused. What is he wrong about?
well thats the problem dumb ass.. it slows the blood flow into your brain resulting in not being able to understand properly. Don't use drugs for a way of learning, not including psychedelics, because it's not going to work. Change your ways friend and you'll be amazed by the things you'll be able to do.
***** This is a self-paced 6 week online program that gives you a full intro and membership into the 20K strong Flow Hacker Nation--a global community of folks working on this exact thing. Would love to have you join us! facebook.com/Flowgenome/app_147250335456844
+deltrontheory If you're of a certain state of mind, I think you can always be in the flow state. As I've read others say, the flow state is our natural state. I've recently, after reading Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity as well as listening to him on youtube speak about Zen Buddhism and spontaneity, begun to let myself be empty, to act spontaneously and naturally, sometimes doing nothing, so as to see what is my body _will_ do itself. I think society has programmed as to make this experience difficult, I'm not sure about you or anyone else, but I feel very often anxious or conscious about what others think of what I am doing. For example, if I were to just stand in the park, or on the side of the road, just staring at the sky, I would usually feel extremely concerned with what 'that' person is thinking. Likewise, if I were to just sit on my sofa, staring into space/relaxing, I would feel concerned about what my older brother or someone about to walk in will think. But why should I? This self-consciousness is what makes us anxious and destroys our flow state. If you notice, children up until a certain stage are quite possibly in this flow state non-stop. I'm sure you have the image; it is their very being. Now I'm not sure, maybe this guy and the scientists are getting at something more than this, a higher experience than this. Never the less I'm sure that such an outlook and approach to life leads to this experience. Bla bla bla, I yapped on, lost my thought, bla bla bla, totally flow :)
***** Nice Lori--yes, fully in line (though he focuses primarily on the psych component and we're integrating that with the neuro-bio stuff too) Great to hear from you!
modvs1 hopefully not--we advocate radical self responsibility and an experimental/experiential approach to all of this. Conduct the experiments, see what results you get and how useful they are, refine, repeat...perform. Our goal is to strip out the mythologies (aka the Snake Oil) and keep the technologies that actually work.
Jamie has nailed it in terms of describing the benefits of being in Flow state. However, he misses a vital point. Flow isn't the cause of high performance as he implied. The moment we try to establish a causality between certain performance state and flow, we lose the ability to 'achieve' flow state because it isn't an ability or skill. Flow is the underlying, foundational state at which we naturally exist. That is why we don't or can't achieve flow state at whim but rather discover it through the practice of abandonment. It occurs when we dissociate the performance outcome from simply being. It occurs when we throw away our expectation about future and intensely focus on being. In another words, we are already in flow state. We just gotta throw away the things that cloud our consciousness to expose our true natural state. And, the best way to do that is focus on being - right here, right now.
Joshua Hong Yes! and...sometimes that Effortless Effort takes a bit of practice!
Joshua Hong It sounds like Zen.
It does indeed--some of the science suggest slightly different neurological profiles for meditation vs. flow-in-action, but many of the sticking points for practice, and for getting out of regular waking state and into those places, share a lot of overlap!
I agree with you, how do we remain at that present state permanently? How do we get rid of all the distractions? Do we use emotions to stay present?
It's physically impossible to be in 'flow' permanently. The neurotransmitters your body is able to supply for each stage of flow are finite. They deplete back to homeostasis. You can 'hack' the neurotransmitters using nootropics to a certain degree. But you can take this only so far. The closest you'll get to experiencing flow more often is learning what Joshua mentioned above. But it takes dedication and a lot of practice.
Howard Thurman: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." awesome quote.
Flow is ...
1) Selfless
It silences our inner critic.
During flow state our prefrontal cortex goes offline.
We fully focus on the activity at hands without observing emotions.
2) Effortless
It accelerates the path to mastery.
Through deeper focus and less inner criticisms people learn faster in a flow state.
One experiment showed a 230% increase in learning speed.
3) Timeless
It's hackable.
We don't experience time when we're in the flow. It can go faster or slower.
Work performance can multiply by 5 during flow making people "work 5 x faster".
Find your passion, avoid distractions and focus on the moment to get a chance at experiencing flow.
Flow state is meditation in movement and meditation is flow state in stillness. If you learn to reach flow in stillness, than any action will flow. Meditation will rewire your brain to access flow more readily, you will know how. If you want to DO, you must first BE. Mindfulness meditation is excellent, the breath is always present, eventually so will your mind.
This is it, this is where it's at, I've experienced this flow in short lived bursts, and just know if i can trigger it at will, all will become possible!
Absolutely brilliant! this is what I've been searching for for 25 years
legends say he still hasnt blinked
funniest comment I've read
Hahaha. Still not..
I haven't seen him blink once. He must be in flow state 24/7
He blinks every time you blink.
since you pointed that out im now looking at some crack eyes
Really Great Flow Hacking details. Thanks for passing on these insights to the local TedX Community.
What a great talk by Jamie Wheal! Every athlete NEEDs to absorb everything she can about flow. It's truly the rocket fuel that powers our moon shots!
If your soul is hungry there is an answer:“On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
I am putting this on my Flow State playlist. Please comment below if you have suggestions for more I should add to it. Thanks again!
Hey Gabrielle Angel Lilly , you've probably watched him already but if you haven't check out Steven Kotler. An awesome speaker on the topic of flow 😁
I've been researching flow state for my final year dissertation. Pouring through academic journals over the past month.
These guys are entrepreneurs. They have a great marketing team, a great design team and make a lot of big claims and assumptions, not even theory, merely hypothesise with no scientific back up, it's insane!
What they "add" to traditional flow theory is nothing more that a stupidly big price tag.
See them more as modern day self-help guru's similar to Tony Robbins. Just know that everything they say that's worthwhile reading can be found in a book written in the 70's (FLOW), anything else they say is either opinion or else just utter nonsense.
markozam - in the 70's they don't have sophisticated instruments to measured what's going on inside our brain and body. I agreed with you that they are marketing a product here. But not all of what they said about the changes that go in our brain in term of brain waves and neurochemicals and in our body in term of hormones are utter nonsense. Actually they made a very important connect to how we can be healthy in mind and body by accessing this flow state. Something that the book FLOW does not said.
So awesome to hear your story and description of flow state...I am fascinated by deliberate and naturally occurring states of high efficiency and effectiveness. Thank you!
Dreams are TOP SECRET of so-called DNA.
Wonderful descriptions of Flow. Thanks for posting.
This is like meditation.
Flow state is meditation in movement and meditation is flow state in stillness.
Great insight , im going to look into Flow some more!
This presentation is very thought provoking, however I still have no idea how to access the flow state.
If you're well-versed in anything, just sit down and start doing it. The flew state may or may not come according to how deeply you're set in to your activity (and how much you truly enjoy it).
Learn Yognidra and Meditation.
Watch a video Spiritual Reality journey within.
@@DrSRanjanMBBSAcupuncturist send us links if u have
Meditate, mindfulness is an excellent tool.
This was beautifully inspirational!
Beautiful, thank you dear ❤️
0:35 My mother was so old school Ivory Coast African, she made Margaret Thatcher look like Martha Stewart. ... (85% of audience : "What the hell ? " )
More of that please
i don’t think it requires high performance activity, otherwise it is limited to elite performers, performances and achievers…
=^..^=
i feel it when absorbed in any activity that allows time to vanish as a construct…
that part of my mindbrain starts flying the bus for a change…
i used to count on it with physical activity but after crippling rheumatoid arthritis i enjoy reaching there with painting, chess puzzles, picking up a camera after sipping cannabis, listening to, “the expanse”, audiobook series on a bench in my bamboo grove…
daily life in my ikigai cat sanctuary…
He lost me a few times but left me with hope. He's very interesting.
He lost you, or you lost yourself? lol Sounds like you got lost because of attention deficiency.
Anyway, the man's a genius. Lookup the recent presentation he gave @google with *Steven Kotler*.
Very interesting! I can see where this could be extremely useful for artists! I make jewelry and am always looking for ways to tap into my creativity! I subscribed!
Love that quote!!
Wow .. just wow
that story before 5 mins
You saved my present
Great talk. Thank you! #LoveRevolution #EmpowermentTribe
This is awesome. Great work. I need a Flow Dojo session.
12:20 Albert Einstein used to Look at the Clouds.
( Relaxation to alpha or, theta state intermittently as n when needed is must for High Productivity.)
Real Learning comes during Delta Sleep.
Should watch this every day :D
I was the kid who was pulling out the Reddy-Wip
Awesome talk!
This was a direct almost verbatim summary of Steven Kotler's book "The Rise of Superman". Either they are partners or someone is plagiarizing.
They are partners...I watched them speak together at a google seminar.
Wow amazing, I might make a video to show my subs!
Does anybody know of research into the benefits of participating in The Flow Genome project after mild to moderate traumatic brain injury?
Wheal is wrong.
Flow, as defined by M. Csikszentmalyi, who is oddly not mentioned in this talk, defined flow as the result of a matching of skill and challenge. This corresponds to a slight moment to moment uncertainty in achieving a desired goal, and this always corresponds to the release of the neuro-modulator dopamine. And Wheal's emphasis on 'brain waves' has nothing to do with the affective experience of flow.
The release of the neuro-modulator dopamine occurs when an individual experiences or anticipates the perception of positive unpredicted events. Dopamine fixes attention, stimulates learning, and is subjectively felt as a feeling of energy, arousal, timelessness, but not ironically of pleasure.
Dopamine increases the momentary value or decision utility of behavior. If that moment to moment behavior conforms to its predicted utility or ending value, this attentive focus will be correlated with a state of relaxation that in turn elicits the release of endogenous opioids that are reflected in a feeling of pleasure. (For example, a creative artist working on a painting may feel energized and pleasurable in his activity)
On the other hand, if the dopamine induced change in the decision utility of behavior is not coherent with the future or predicted utility of behavior, as in distraction due to novel but useless alternatives (e.g. accessing social media while on the job), then neuro-muscular activation or muscular attention will occur and result in pain, opioid release will stop, and the individual will report a subject state of unhappiness.
Prediction: the behavior of keeping focused on task is the primary independent measure for happiness.
Proof: Simply poll people randomly during that the course of their days, and those who are focused will feel happy and content, and those who are distracted will feel unhappy and discontented.
This is exactly what the psychologist Matt Killingsworth did with over 15000 subjects who were polled randomly during various moments of their days. His discussion of his results are in the TED talk below.
www.ted.com/talks/matt_killingsworth_want_to_be_happier_stay_in_the_moment?language=en
And of course, my longer explanation here.
www.scribd.com/doc/284056765/The-Book-of-Rest-The-Odd-Psychology-of-Doing-Nothing
+AJ Marr Would that explain why the surfers get up so early and get into their sandy wetsuits because they anticipate the feeling of flow or release of dopamine when they ride those waves?
AJ Marr Wheal and his 'research partner' (here I use the term research loosely as theirs is a misinterpretation of various pieces of curated information that proves their theories) are wrong- and pitching theories to access flow that are wrong. Like you, I've researched the elements of 'flow' including the unique balance of natural chemicals that bathe body and brain during true flow states- as identified by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, the 'founder' of flow whose work is quoted here and who is not identified. You are right- Wheal and Kotler are wrong.
@@DoctorPamBrill Where exactly are they wrong? They seem to be basing their research fundamentally on Csikszentmihalyi's work, who is often mentioned in their texts and interviews of course, if not in this particular clip. Skill / challenge level is a vital component of flow, of course, and Wheal definitely doesn't deny that.
Just confused. What is he wrong about?
i am high right now and having a really hard to time to remember/understand his long story
well thats the problem dumb ass.. it slows the blood flow into your brain resulting in not being able to understand properly. Don't use drugs for a way of learning, not including psychedelics, because it's not going to work. Change your ways friend and you'll be amazed by the things you'll be able to do.
MOZParungao When I play soccer high, im in peak performance. When sober, I try to hard to get into the flow state, allowing me to never access it lol
Flowstate is like love it maybe the same thing the symptoms is the same in the brain.
amazing
very interesting
System thinking triggers flow.
wow
very cool! as an artist, this gave me more ideas for tapping into my creativity! :)
very good
This is top.
this was cool
I clapped at home. for full 30 seconds.
Nice talk but where is the instruction manual? Where can I find step by step instructions on how to enter the zone at will?
step one: do something that makes you feel alive
step two: feel alive
step three: do more of that
Mindfull Meditation.
***** This is a self-paced 6 week online program that gives you a full intro and membership into the 20K strong Flow Hacker Nation--a global community of folks working on this exact thing. Would love to have you join us! facebook.com/Flowgenome/app_147250335456844
Man I keep getting distracted from how one side burn is longer than the other
Question: how long does flow state usually last?
anywhere from 1 second to 1 hour if your lucky
+deltrontheory If you're of a certain state of mind, I think you can always be in the flow state. As I've read others say, the flow state is our natural state. I've recently, after reading Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity as well as listening to him on youtube speak about Zen Buddhism and spontaneity, begun to let myself be empty, to act spontaneously and naturally, sometimes doing nothing, so as to see what is my body _will_ do itself.
I think society has programmed as to make this experience difficult, I'm not sure about you or anyone else, but I feel very often anxious or conscious about what others think of what I am doing. For example, if I were to just stand in the park, or on the side of the road, just staring at the sky, I would usually feel extremely concerned with what 'that' person is thinking. Likewise, if I were to just sit on my sofa, staring into space/relaxing, I would feel concerned about what my older brother or someone about to walk in will think. But why should I? This self-consciousness is what makes us anxious and destroys our flow state.
If you notice, children up until a certain stage are quite possibly in this flow state non-stop. I'm sure you have the image; it is their very being. Now I'm not sure, maybe this guy and the scientists are getting at something more than this, a higher experience than this. Never the less I'm sure that such an outlook and approach to life leads to this experience.
Bla bla bla, I yapped on, lost my thought, bla bla bla, totally flow :)
8:40 personal bookmark for me. Please ignore
Share Your Thoughts
Jamie, is this in line with Csikszentmihalyi's ideas?
I enjoyed your presentation!
I still have a copy of your manuscript from HMI.
~Peace.
Lori
***** Nice Lori--yes, fully in line (though he focuses primarily on the psych component and we're integrating that with the neuro-bio stuff too) Great to hear from you!
Why do they call it 'genome' if it has nothing to do with genes?
“Basically everything you’ve ever seen on a Ted Talk is probably not true.” - Jamie Wheal on Big Think presentation.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣
nice
I experience Theta brain waves nearly every time I spend 90 minutes inside an isolation tank.
Poor dude. All of his opening jokes flopped. lol
cool
long video wow
Samadhi
*
What if killing tribal people and taking their lands, conquering and dominating other people make you come alive, doe you encourage that?
Snake oil.
modvs1 hopefully not--we advocate radical self responsibility and an experimental/experiential approach to all of this. Conduct the experiments, see what results you get and how useful they are, refine, repeat...perform. Our goal is to strip out the mythologies (aka the Snake Oil) and keep the technologies that actually work.
modvs1 I feel this way when I get to work on the stuff I love. Not snake oil if you can experience exactly what he is talking about.
.
these guys are neoliberal saladpunchers
lol
too long
:)
WTF?
WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much life story.
wow
lol