We attended a talk recently that we were excited to see about applying the “flow state” to working in startups and other aspects of life. 

The talk featured entrepreneurs as well as coaches and instructors. We loved the enthusiasm and interest in this topic, both from the speakers and the people in the audience.

The flow state is about being so absorbed in the task or activity at hand that we are energized, focused, effective, and generally feeling great. It’s also known as being “in the zone” and is associated with high performance athletes, performers, musicians,  and other people that need to be extremely focused to succeed. 

While we loved the talk, we found a few important concepts missing or under-emphasized. So to anyone who is fascinated by the flow state and how to achieve it, we’d like to describe what we refer to as the “Living Flow State”:  by unlocking the power of our minds through our life force energy, we can become happy, free, wise, and extremely effective at anything we put our minds to.

We can enter the flow state whenever we want through meditation, and apply this state to all of the activities in our lives through mindfulness. We provide techniques that teach you how to do this on Living Flow. Please see the Related Content section on how to begin. 

We are pointing this out because we keep seeing flow state described as something that you can trick your brain into by focusing deeply and working very hard at one task. While this is certainly true, it leaves out what you really need to know to experience flow state as much as possible: flow state is our natural state of living and being, but we need to retrain our mind to get back to it easily, since we’ve been incorrectly taught to avoid it since we were born! 

Flow state is not a “trick” or something that only high performance athletes are capable of under extreme circumstances. The misconception we keep hearing is that you enter the flow state mainly by intense outer circumstances. Flow state is not outer, it’s inner, and can be applied to any activity, even ones that we  consider ordinary and mundane like taking a shower, eating, and talking. 

By learning the principles of meditation and mindfulness, any of us can reach flow state consistently and  much more powerfully than by just doing an outer activity without strengthening our minds. The more we practice it, the more that our lives become graceful and free. No tricks required!