Mini Ep. 60: Flow

Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJ Mental Models.com and check it out today. Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And in this week's mini episode, I want to continue the exploration of some of the mental models you might have encountered in popular science. Sometimes these get discussed in the context of sports like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but often they get discussed in the context of really any performance endeavor, uh, both athletic or not. So today I want to talk about flow, often called the flow state. Um, you may have heard this by other names, sometimes people talk about being in the zone. That's talking about flow. Now, people who have heard this term might think it's just a buzzword, but there's actually psychology behind it, and we're going to explain that a little bit here today. So, the idea behind flow was first presented in 1975 by, uh, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and I just want everyone to take a second and appreciate me for spending the time to figure out how to get this guy's name right. Uh, but it's become a very popular concept in the world of peak performance. This is essentially where you get into that state where you are totally and completely focused on the activity that you're doing, time seems to move quicker, there's kind of a joy of mastery involved in what's happening. Anyone who's been training Jiu-Jitsu or any similar activity for a while has probably experienced something like this, where at some point in time, just everything clicks and you're just performing your best, you're doing great, you're in the moment, you love every second of it. That's often called the flow state. And it's something that athletes and peak performers in non-athletic endeavors are always chasing. Right? We always want to try to get into that flow state when we're performing. Of course, it's easier said than done, and we're going to talk a little bit about the psychology behind this here today. So, according to Wikipedia, um, the components of being in a flow state are, number one, you've got an intense and focused concentration in the present moment. So, think, you know, mindfulness, when you're just completely absorbed in what's happening. Number two, there's a merging of action and awareness. So, what you're perceiving and what you're doing are just completely intertwined. Interestingly, this kind of sounds to me like the concept of perception-action coupling, which the ecological dynamics folks talk about a lot. Number three, there's a loss of reflective self-consciousness. Basically, you've abandoned all of the thoughts and concerns that kind of make up your day-to-day, and you're entirely absorbed into the task at hand. Number four, there's a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity. So, really, this is kind of this feeling of mastery. You feel like you're getting it done. You feel like you've got a handle on the situation. A part of flow is feeling like you're good at what you're doing. Number five, there's a distorted temporal experience. Basically, you lose track of time. And if you've ever been in a flow state, you know what this means. You're in the zone, and the next thing you know, way more time has passed than you thought. And number six, your experience of the activity is intrinsically rewarding. So, that means it's no longer about winning or losing or results. The act of doing it is its own joy. So, those are the defining characteristics of a flow state, and this is a performance state that we always want to get into. It's easier said than done, though. If it were as simple as just having a switch that you could flip, then everyone would do it. But if you've ever chased this, uh, state of peak performance, then you know that often times it can be frustrating when you just can't achieve it. And when you're not performing the way that you want to perform, it can create a downward spiral of negative performance, where you start getting frustrated, and you start getting in your own head about it. And that is kind of the opposite of flow, right? In a flow state, you are absorbed in the moment, and you are detached from your day-to-day concerns. When you're struggling to get into a flow state, sometimes you're so obsessed with your failure to do it that it makes it harder to get into that flow state in the first place. Now, some folks like Josh Waitzkin from The Art of Learning have talked about this before. He brings up a great example in his book, The Art of Learning, where he talks about how things would prevent him from getting into flow states, whether it be actions that his opponent would do to try to throw him off his game, or just things that annoy him, like having a song stuck in his head. And often the more you fixate on things that are bothering you, the more they're going to bother you. Uh, this is a concept called the law of contrast, and I'll probably do another mini episode on that at some point. But the idea is that you can't just negate a thought. So, the classic example is, if I tell you, don't think of a pink elephant. You're probably thinking of a pink elephant. It's hard to not think about something. If you want to defeat destructive thinking, a better option is to change your focus to something else, rather than trying to stop a thought. So, when it comes to performance and entering a flow state, our objective should be finding triggers so that whenever something happens that would take us out of our game, we mentally shift back to the things that keep us on our game. So, to give an example, again, in his book The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin talks about how he had a song stuck in his head that was so distracting that it was actually interfering with his ability to perform. And of course, the more you stress about something like this, the more of a problem it's going to be. Uh, and that's because of the law of contrast. So, the way that he eventually conquered that is he reframed his thinking about that song. Instead of hating that song and thinking of it as something that was pulling him out of flow, he reframed that mindset and decided that that song, that was going to be his go-song. Right? You know how when you're competing, you got a a song or a playlist that you like to play to get into the zone. He said, you know what, that song is going to be one of those songs for me. And upon changing his perception of that song and thinking of that as something that would hype him up instead of distracting him, he was able to use this thing that used to be bothering him to improve his performance and help him get into a flow state rather than get pulled out of it. Now, like with a lot of these pop science concepts, we often hear about them, they sound good, and so we just run with them. Um, but it's possible to chase these ideas a little bit too much. Um, you don't want to get so into the practice of trying to figure out the optimal way to enter a flow state that it interferes with your activity of just doing the thing. So, whenever you're looking at a mental model like this, a concept that is supposed to help you with performance, my advice is use it as an indicator, but don't get so fixated on it that it actually distracts you from the practice of doing the training. Because ultimately, if you want to enter a flow state, you need to do the activity. And if you're spending all of your time fixated on how to enter a flow state, you might never get to that flow state in the first place because you're not doing enough of the thing that you want to do. So, I hope all of that helps. This is a great concept. Um, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book about this called Flow. So, you might want to give that a listen. It's also a topic that is not new or novel at this point. It's been covered very well elsewhere. So, if you want to learn more, I would suggest just looking that up. Thanks for hanging out with me here, and letting me take a shot at explaining this to you. Uh, as always, if you want more of this, it all lives at BJJ Mental Models.com. All of our full-length episodes, mini episodes like this, and newsletter are completely free. And if you haven't already, please check out BJJ Mental Models Premium. It's the best way that we can help you level up your Jiu-Jitsu game and your Jiu-Jitsu career. There's a lot of people who have found it to be quite transformative. So, please do check that out. That, and our podcast, and our newsletter are all at BJJ Mental Models.com. I'll put a link in the show notes. Thank you so much for hanging out with me here, and I'll talk to you in the next one.