The Positive Psychology Concept of Flow

Have you ever been completely lost in an activity, completely oblivious to the outside world?

Have you ever been so absorbed that you’ve not noticed that you’re hungry, you’re not noticed that you’re thirsty, you’re focused completely on the task in hand and when you’re finished or perhaps been rudely interrupted. Then you realise that hours have passed and you hadn’t even noticed.

This is the psychological concept of flow.

The psychological concept of Flow was conceptualised by the Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

In the 1960s Csikszentmihalyi and a colleague were studying artists and noticed how they could get completely absorbed into their work. Totally focused, single minded, they worked on their project for hours and hours without a break, perhaps didn’t even eat, didn’t stop to drink. He went on to study people in other fields as well, sculptors, dancers, chess players, and discovered that people find a genuine satisfaction during this state of flow when they’re totally absorbed. They feel strong, they feel alert, they feel in control, it’s effortless and they don’t feel self conscious about what they’re doing. It’s been described as a highly pleasurable and highly rewarding experience.

This idea of Flow forms a part of Positive Psychology, in particular the ‘E’ (engagement) of the PERMA model. It’s seen as one of life’s enjoyable states of being. It encourages creativity, productivity, emotional regulation, and it’s also associated with intrinsic motivation, happiness and contentment.

Flow isn’t just switching off. It’s not mindfulness and being in the moment. There’s activity involved with it.

What Are the Components of Flow?

When you’re experiencing flow, you’re controlling your mind by focusing on a particular task at hand. It stops outside distractions, it stops our inner thoughts and negative thinking.

The elements that Csikszentmihalyi found had to be in place are:

• There has to be a challenge. You have to be stretching your skills. So if something’s too easy, you’re just going to get bored and give up. If something’s too hard, you’re going to get bored and give up. You have to find this sweet spot in the middle where you’re being challenged. You don’t have to be a master of your skill, but it’s that stretch from where you are, being able to do what you want to do, but being challenged to do it.
• There are clear goals every step of the way, so you’re moving and progressing forward. And I think that if you think about the painters that he started out observing, they’re going to want to finish the picture, and there’s going to be steps along the way to get there.
• There’s immediate feedback to one’s actions. That is about being able to identify that something is happening, if you’re painting a picture, then you can see what’s appearing before you; if you use the wrong type of blue, you’re going to know about it straight away and you can correct that. If you’re writing code, you can see that you’re making progress with making the code. It’s not. It’s not feedback from someone else, it’s feedback from the activity.
• Actions and awareness merge; you’re completely absorbed, almost not thinking about.
• Distractions are excluded from our consciousness. We’re not even aware of them. And we’re also not worried about failure.
• We’re just doing the activity for the sake of doing the activity.
• Self consciousness disappears. If some people walk through an artist’s gallery, perhaps the artist may not even notice that they’re there.
• Time becomes distorted. You think five minutes has passed and it’s been an hour, or they think an hour’s passed and it’s been a day.

It’s not just about how we feel about an activity, but it’s about the whole process.

For a lot of people there’ll be activities where you fall in and out of flow. Sometimes you struggle and sometimes it’s just effortless to be in flow.

Examples of flow activities include:

• Skiing
• Playing an instrument
• Cooking or baking.
• Reading
• Debating
• Dancing
• Yoga
• Artistic or creative endeavours
• Certain types of exercise
• Gaming – some research has shown that gaming could put participants into a flow state and it might be a useful state if, for example a teenager struggles with anxiety.

If you’re are looking for flow activities, think about what activities help you to escape from your own thoughts.

How Might Flow Be Useful In The Coaching Room

Given that flow has been shown to increase wellbeing, relaxation, and stress management, that it can enhance creativity, and help people to switch off from the pressures of life, it’s a really great tool to bring into the coaching room. Sharing the idea of Flow with clients and then exploring it with them can be really useful:

How much flow do they experience at the moment?

What’s brought them flow in the past?

What have they enjoyed?

What they’ve found useful to help them switch off?

What might bring them more flow?

Once coachees understand what flow is and they start to think about it, they often realise that part of perhaps getting back to themselves, or improving the work-life balance, could be re engaging with some of those things.

Invite them to think about how often they’re in flow now and perhaps what they could try again to bring that back into their lives and revisit and see what else could bring them flow. Perhaps they could go and try some new things out and find out what experiences they want to re-engage with and assess whether that’s bringing more of a sense of wellbeing into their life.

Flow and personality Types

Different personalities will find flow in different activities. If you were an accountant, you might be in flow getting lost in a spreadsheet and that might be part of your personality: you need quiet, you need to focus on the detail, you need to plan it all out.

But if you are an extrovert and not planful and not a detail person and you’re having to spend your day sitting quietly, doing that detailed work you’re going to struggle.

Having these discussions can help to discover whether a client’s workplace is a good fit for them. And if there’s no flow to be found in the workplace, what activities put you in flow outside of work? Would that be sufficient to counter the lack of flow at work?

We hope this is a useful introduction to the Positive Psychology Concept of Flow. More posts on similar topics are: 

Positive Psychology

PERMA model

To find out more about our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma click through here