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Flow’s Pattern: 4 Quick Frameworks For Getting Into Flow States More Often So That You Can Boost Performance, Explore What’s New, And Transcend Your Comfort Zone

Mitchell Wilson

By 

Mitchell Wilson

Published 

Feb 9, 2023

Flow’s Pattern: 4 Quick Frameworks For Getting Into Flow States More Often So That You Can Boost Performance, Explore What’s New, And Transcend Your Comfort Zone

Giving into comfort means you miss the opportunity for flow states.

Those experiences where you were embodied and fully present, but playing it safe never gets you there. I spent 100s of hours exclusively studying everything I could about flow states. I’ve built my life around flow states to maximize personal growth and break the mold of who I’ve been before.

The more you know about flow the more likely you’ll be able to orchestrate the triggers to produce flow more often by:

  • having an invigorating conversation on a podcast
  • jumping out of a plane
  • or reading a life-altering book

Let’s drop-in.

Strike A Balance Tilted Towards Growth 

Comfort Zone Staircase

Your comfort zone is like a step on a never-ending staircase. 

Each step you take up the staircase, you transcend your previous level of expertise. You want to become the best you can be, yet there’s always a more evolved version of you waiting just beyond who you currently are. 

Some see it as a curse - no matter how hard they try, they’ll never reach a final destination of ‘enough’. The process is never complete.

Others see it as beautiful - they can constantly evolve, dedicating their life to becoming all that they can be.

4% Rule

Over and over again the content on flow states continues to point to the 4% rule. 

What this means is that if you push past your comfort zone by just 4%, you’ll drop into a flow state. The core truth of flow states is that it’s about striking the right balance between skill level and the challenge at hand:

  • Too high of skills for the current challenge and you’ll be sub-aroused and get bored. 
  • Too high of a challenge for your current skill level and you’ll be paralyzed by anxiety.

It’s about finding the sweet spot just barely beyond your current skills - that’s where you want to play.

It’s the ultimate carrot to strive for because what you get in return for stretching beyond your current abilities is one of the best states of consciousness a human can experience.

Order / Chaos

A friend once told me, “if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.” 

He could have just been quoting a movie, but it’s stuck with me for a decade. It’s important to be on the edge. Not ‘on-edge’ as in a stressful state of alertness, but on the edge as in you’re leaning into the unknown ever so slightly. 

You have one foot in the realm of comfort and order while the other foot is curiously exploring what’s new and just beyond.

Performance Law

In 1908, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson developed a law for peak performance called the Yerkes and Dodson Law. 

The law dictates that mental or physiological arousal boosts performance to only a certain degree. 

Performance starts to drop off after arousal levels become too much.

Recognizing the pattern

Through all three of the previous points, you can start to see a repeating pattern emerge: 

there’s a fine art to getting the balance right between where you’re currently at (skill-wise) and what you’re working towards.

Put another way, the sweet spot to evolving beyond what you currently are lies just outside what you can do now.

Flow’s price for entry is no small fee. 

To enter, your perception of yourself must feel as though you’re leveraging every bit of talent you possess. Doing all you can with what you’ve got. 

That’s how you get into flow.

Build top-tier mental wealth

Let's keep your soul off airplane mode.

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