Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

How do I know this? From personal experience.

2004, I came across a book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

And in there, he said something similar.

I mean, they're all saying the same thing.

But then ways started to show up that were easier and faster, my style.

And here's the thing about it.

While I was printing those reports, I got to study and read books, listen to audio programs and so forth on the internet, learning about money, business, entrepreneurship, moving up in my career.

I ended up moving up in my career.

It's not force-based.

It's an access point into the flow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talked about this in the book Flow.

When you're doing what you love to do, when you got a business model or you're offering a product or service and a, and a business model, ideally.

It can all be ideal.

I got down on myself and it really stemmed from simple distractions and procrastination.

So that is where I started researching, okay, how do you deal with this? And one of the things that I found that was absolutely magical, I actually experienced it before I knew the name for it, was flow states.

Okay.

And can you explain flow states to people who probably never heard of it? I know some people at home are nodding their heads.

They're like, yes, Stephen, we know what this is.

For those who are not, let me explain this as clearly as I can, which is a Hungarian-American psychologist.

And he said, I want to find out what this state is that they create inside their heads.

And then like Prometheus, try and bring this down to all of us so we could access it.

That's where you are super passionate, and you've developed high skill in it, and you've got this elusive moment where you have the right level of mastery and challenge, and you are, like, in the zone.

That's the ideal, but it's important to know as soon as you become super masterful and the challenge isn't as intense, it will cease to be flow, because the flow state is defined by having the right level of balance between those two things.

And so for me, understanding that, both firsthand and then re- reading the works of people like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow and really, uh, outlines what flow looks like and how it comes about.

Understanding that meant that I knew that this is, like, a...

All of my passion and all of my mastery and all of the flow comes and goes, and that's actually just part of it.

That's also how you access the flow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talked about it in his wonderful book, Flow.

He says, "There's a sweet spot where challenge meets skill." If you just step into the challenge, like you just make the video anyways, your style, yeah, there might be a bit of challenge, but afterwards you feel better.

That's also how you actualize some real self-confidence.