Unlocking The Flow State

24.07.24

I cried just a few moments ago.

This doesn’t happen very often but I experienced profound tears of happiness. I got a message from someone saying they loved my book so much that they wanted to translate it into Spanish.

The crazy thing is that an Argentinian guy I became friends with sent me his translation a few weeks ago, and I just have to review and properly format it to make it available next month.

As I was reading this message, I was flooded by so many distinct emotions that I prefer just to name it as a beautiful experience. As I embodied these feelings, I was taken back to when I was a child. Since I can remember, I wanted to be good at something. I wanted to find that one thing I could feel was mine. A thing I could deeply connect with, master, and share with others.

Not everyone has this void but I certainly did. I never felt I was good enough or had the capability to master anything. I tried so many things, but my belief in myself was so low that I could never stick with anything long enough to truly develop myself.

I remember this period in school, it must have been 5th or 6th grade, in which the whole school was extremely engaged with football. Every PE class felt like a championship and I was unexpectedly good at being a goalkeeper. People would fight for me and for a fat clumsy kid, this was surreal.

This was the first moment I remember feeling appreciated. In this period, I asked my parents to enroll me in a proper football school and I remember being so excited… but this only lasted for about a couple of months. Soon after I got in, I broke a toe and had to rest for a few months.

I can’t say exactly why, but I never came back. Maybe I felt it simply wasn’t for me or I got frustrated. I don’t know, maybe my childish mind wasn’t strong enough to persist or I simply wanted to feel important rather than becoming an athlete.

Now that I’m 31, I have a better understanding and I know I was after the feeling of being good at something. I still love doing sports but I know that my natural abilities aren’t in this area. I was always meant to understand the mysteries of the psyche and translate them into an accessible language to other people, but this only became clear to me about 3 years ago.

When I was younger, I was so indecisive that my parents enrolled me in business school and I did that for a semester. I can’t tell you how laughable this is, the thought of working in a company gives me crippling anxiety and if I was judged by my math skills, I’d probably be considered retarded, lol.

Then, I wanted to study marketing and I did that for a whole year. It was a bit better but still wasn’t what I truly wanted. What really made my heart beat faster was music, but again, I didn’t feel good enough to become a professional musician.

However, there came a point when I felt time was passing by and I needed to decide for myself. In a surge of courage and inspiration, I enrolled in music school. This was the first important decision I ever made in my life and looking back, it represents the first step in my individuation journey and the moment I truly began separating from my parents.

With this decision, I experienced a new vitality that affected everything. I joined the gym, lost 23 kg, and my depression and anxiety finally started to fade. Music was the first thing I ever took seriously in my life, it was deeply important to me and I was willing to do whatever it took to become truly good at it. And so I did, I’d practice hours and hours every day. This brought meaning and direction to my life.

At the time, I didn’t know, but these were also my first experiences with the flow state, one of the keys to living a meaningful life and a powerful antidote to other people’s judgments and opinions. When you find something that demands skill and you can do it for hours and hours regardless of external pressure, you may have a find a gift.

You see, people think that achieving meaning is something static, like a final destination. This may have a philosophical value but in practice, I believe meaning lies in being fully immersed in something deeply valuable to you and then putting it in service of other people. It’s internal and external and selfish and selfless at the same time.

In my experience as a therapist, 99% of people know exactly what they want to do with their lives. The problem is always fear. Maybe they’re afraid of disappointing their parents or facing the judgment of other people. Maybe they’re afraid of failure and don’t feel confident in their abilities. Or maybe, they’re afraid of being vulnerable and following their souls.

However, it’s only on this sacred path that you can feel truly fulfilled. That’s why the first key to living a meaningful life and unlocking the flow state is deeply caring about something and allowing yourself to be fully affected by it. Most people feel lost because they avoid this responsibility, after all once you care about something this immediately puts you in a vulnerable position.

Suddenly, the stakes are high, you have skin in the game, and you know that everything depends on you. The excuses you had are gone, either you act on it or you’ll continue to feel anxious and depressed.

 Being in this position is exactly what triggers the flow state, and this is the moment you feel truly alive and start being driven by purpose. When you commit to exploring your potential and authentic desires you can tap into an endless source of motivation.

When you’re guided by something greater than you, work doesn’t feel like work and you unlock an effortless state. Instead of being guided by fear and avoiding mistakes, you suddenly find yourself being sustained by inspiration.

This may sound a bit “woo-woo” but my poetic argumentation is backed by neuroscience and the positive psychology field.

By the way, I explore this whole process of uncovering your authentic self and overcoming your fears in Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual.

Authentic Happiness

Martin Seligmann in the book Authentic Happiness explores 3 types of happiness:

The Pleasant Life – The first one consists of maximizing pleasant bodily sensations like eating your favorite foods and drinking a good glass of wine. In my case, I’d choose any great Italian pasta accompanied by a pretentious glass of Pinot Noir, haha.

Everyone knows that having these moments is great and it’s important to learn how to enjoy them. As they say here in Argentina: Disfrutar la buena comida. But, we also know that they can be very fleeting, and devoting a life to seeking pleasure quickly becomes poisonous.

The Good Life or Engaged Life: The second layer consists of exploring your potential and cultivating your virtues and strengths. This is directly linked with experiencing the flow state and being “in the zone”. This state allows you to be fully immersed in something and the activity itself is deeply pleasurable and rewarding, it is autotelic. Furthermore, flow is the hidden key to unleashing intrinsic motivation.

The Meaningful Life: Finally, the third dimension of happiness evokes a sense of meaning and purpose. This happens the moment you put your talents in service of others and the higher good. This unlocks a new layer of the human experience and a deeper sense of lasting fulfillment.

Flow as A Religious Experience

However, if you’ve been paying attention, to me the secret lies in learning to unlock the flow state as the third layer is dependent on that. Flow is a concept created by Mihály Csiksentmihalyi and he describes it as a state of complete absorption in an activity, where the challenges of the task match the individual’s skills and abilities, and as we’ve seen, the activity is autotelic.

However, recent research discovered that true flow only occurs when the skills and the challenges are high. That’s why people who experience this state are constantly pushing their boundaries. The better you get the more you’re rewarded with flow.

Furthermore, experiencing flow has so many other benefits it feels completely made up, like boosting your productivity by 500% without feeling burnt out and tremendously enhancing your creativity.

Here’s a list by Steven Kotler with a few benefits:

• A heightened sense of engagement, enjoyment, and satisfaction.
• A reduction in negative emotions such as worry, self-doubt, and fear.
• Intense focus and concentration that helps prevent the intrusion of negative or distressing thoughts.
• A release of pent-up emotions, especially when engaging in activities that involve physical movement or creative expression
• A reduction in stress levels.
• Boosted self-confidence and self-efficacy.
• An improved overall mood and sense of well-being.

However, despite all of these benefits, experiencing flow can be a lot more profound. In fact, flow used to be studied as religious experiences by the psychologist William James, as numinous experiences by Carl Jung, and as peak experiences by Abraham Maslow.

Here, it’s important to clarify what I mean by that, to Carl Jung “Religion, as the Latin word denotes, is a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolf Otto aptly termed the numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will. On the contrary, it seizes and controls the human subject, who is always rather its victim than its creator. The numinosum —whatever its cause may be—is an experience of the subject independent of his will. At all events, religious teaching as well as the consensus gentium always and everywhere explain this experience as being due to a cause external to the individual. The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness. This is, at any rate, the general rule” (C. G. Jung – V11 – §6).

This perfectly aligns with flow descriptions such as experiencing time dilation, being fully present, and a sensation that you’re merging with external elements and other people. Especially in creative settings, there’s the sensation that a higher force is guiding you and you’re merely a channel translating the message of the creative spirit.

When you’re playing music, you suddenly feel one with your instrument, it’s as if your hand is moving by itself and you’re transported to another plane.

When you’re doing sports, your senses are heightened, you’re more agile, and can predict everybody’s movements. You’re more creative and do completely unexpected things, new connections and pathways emerge. Flow allows magic to happen.

Every time you experience it you feel alive and I feel my whole body tingling as I write that. These experiences unlock a deeper layer of the human experience that fills our hearts with joy and inspiration and can potentially give us a sense of meaning and purpose when we share it with others. In fact, I’m experiencing it as I write this.

As you can see, religious experiences aren’t limited to traditional religious settings, they happen when you fully commit to exploring your potential and developing your abilities. Flow happens when you devote yourself to learning and mastering a craft, be it professionally or as a hobby.

Living an Audacious Life

Perhaps I left you wondering about how I became a therapist. Well, music has taught me many important things, first and foremost, the importance of being vulnerable and following your heart, second, developing a work ethic, and third, everything about experiencing flow.

However, music wasn’t my final destination, I was meant to develop other dormant abilities. I’ll share more about this story in the near future, but the important message is that my guide in this process was always these profound experiences that today we call flow.

They allowed me to rise above my fears and keep walking despite not being able to see a clear path. When I was feeling defeated and thinking about giving up, they sustained me. I knew I only had to find this quiet place inside myself and allow my soul to guide me.

it’s difficult talking about this without talking about me and sharing my deepest beliefs that transcend any scientific terminology. Perhaps, that a last lesson, what’s truly valuable can’t be found in the latest scientific discoveries, what truly matters is feeling connected to your soul. That’s when you know you’re on the right path.

That was a very unexpected final note, but an honest one. We must learn to sustain the paradoxes of life as truth is always somewhere in the middle and appears in a process of emergence. Truth appears as a synthesis that contains both the rational and the irrational.

Time for a recap!

First, you need the courage to accept your authentic desires and commit to exploring your potential. Once you find what’s truly valuable to you, you must turn that into a craft. Lastly, you put this craft in service of other people, in service of something greater than you.

Finally, you can find the step-by-step to effortlessly mastering your habits, unleashing endless motivation, and unlocking the flow state in my newest course Obliterate Procrastination.

The members of the Audacity University already told me they were blown away by the course 😉

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

• Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual – My best-selling and accessible course will introduce you to all you need to know to disrupt the unconscious patterns keeping you stuck.
• Audacity University – My flagship course contains a  4-year psychology curriculum and gives you access to the Audacity Inner Circle and live meetings.
• Obliterate Procrastination – Effortlessly master your habits, unleash endless motivation, and unlock the flow state.
• Mentorship – Catalyze your personal transformation with 1 on 1 sessions. Master your psychology, relationships, and business.