Finding Flow: Where Challenge Meets Capability

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying this experience and gave it a name: flow. He found that it tends to occur when the challenge in front of us is closely matched to our ability to meet it.

You know the feeling.

You’re skiing and suddenly you stop thinking about skiing.

You’re running and the stride just goes.

You’re hitting golf balls and one swing follows the next without forcing it.

You’re working out and for a few minutes the whole thing becomes quiet.

You’re just there.

That’s flow.

Athletes talk about being “in the zone,” but you don’t have to be an elite athlete to experience it.

Flow happens when the challenge in front of you and your ability to meet that challenge are pretty well matched.

Too easy and you’re bored.

Too hard and you tense up.

Right in the middle there’s this beautiful place where you have to pay attention, but you’re not overwhelmed.

That’s where a lot of good training lives.

And that’s especially important when someone is coming back from pain or injury.

Because now we’re not just training muscles.

We’re training trust.

If your back has hurt every time you bend over for the last six months, your body remembers that.

If your knee gave out once on the stairs, you remember that too.

You can tell yourself everything is fine.

Your nervous system may disagree.

So I’m not interested in immediately proving how tough you are.

I want to give your body a successful experience.

Maybe we shorten the range.

Maybe we lighten the load.

Maybe we slow the movement down.

Maybe we support you.

Maybe we change the position.

And then you do it.

No pain.

No panic.

No drama.

Your body gets a little piece of information:

I can do this.

Then we build on it.

A little more range.

A little more weight.

A little more speed.

A different direction.

Eventually the thing that felt threatening becomes ordinary.

And once it becomes ordinary, we can start playing again.

That’s an important word for me.

Play.

Because a lot of people slowly stop playing without realizing it.

They stop skiing.

They stop running.

They stop wrestling with their kids.

They stop hiking.

They stop getting on the floor.

They stop doing things because somewhere along the way the body stopped feeling trustworthy.

Good training gives some of that back.

And there’s something wonderful about seeing someone move from guarded to capable.

Not reckless.

Capable.

That’s what we’re after.

Getting older does require adaptation.

Your body at 65 is not your body at 25.

That’s fine.

The question isn’t whether things change.

They will.

The question is what we do with the change.

We can keep creating challenges that meet us where we are and invite us forward.

Not force us forward.

Invite us.

That’s where confidence grows.

That’s where movement starts feeling good again.

And sometimes, if we get the balance just right, you stop thinking about the movement altogether.

You’re simply doing it.

That’s flow.

And that’s a pretty good place to be.

We have to change. We do not have to settle.