When You are Over Thinking it?

We tell ourselves stories, trying to justify our actions when they came from feelings, with no thinking whatsoever. The story is a rationalisation because surely there must have been more thinking behind that decision.

When we are racing to meet a deadline, we are laser focused and seem to be in a state of mind that will get the action done no matter what, sleep, illness or any other distractions.

It has been verified time and time again when you have the skills and knowledge in your area of expertise. Then making decisions in the moment with what feels right are the best decisions.

This state of feelings or emotions is called “FLOW” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he wrote a whole book on this state, when he was looking for what made people HAPPY.

And Steven Kotler has written a very good book just recently about how Extreme Sports people have to be in FLOW when they are performing their sports because its life or death, he has called it “The Rise of Superman”.

In most of the cases in both books the elimination of thinking and being in the moment is one of the key ingredients of being in FLOW.

So lets go back to my story of racing to meet a deadline. What's happening here is, you are fully engaged in the moment because that’s all that matters. I have been around tech engineers and software people, they are addicted to these moments. They are like the daredevil sports people that they are in flow and that is the state they want to be in. Even if everything else in life is put aside.

As business owners I have also seen this in their eyes, heard it in their voices and felt how they are so consumed in the moment, its great to capture that moment and they really do become superman.

So when there is no urgency to what we are doing, we drift between what we want in the future and what we did in the past. We start to contemplate what we are worth and what we are doing.

And seems to happen even more so when things are not going well for us, what is this?

It's a lack of focus or in flow terms, not using our natural instincts. We start acting and behaving with what we have seen played out in movies or what we have seen other people around us do. We are not in flow and is not even close to using our instincts and being in the moment.

So what’s happening, thinking can lead to over generalisation of what we know instinctively. There is a time to think and a time to plan and there is a time to act.

And when you are over thinking my guess is that you have already put quite a lot of thinking into the subject already and you just need to act. It comes down to knowing and understanding when to act on the knowledge you have gathered already and be decisive!

If you are able to get into this Flow state when an emergency or life threatened situation is happening. To do it in other situations its adjusting your perception and sensing you are there in a flow state, the great feelings of being active and getting things done will kick in.

If it can be done in those situations, then it can be done in other areas?

Absolutely!!

Isn’t it finding out for yourself what causes that to happen and then when you need to be productive or make good decisions or make the best impression on people just triggering those feelings and you will be in an empowering state.

I am sure it is…

In the future, notice the times you are in an empowering, productive feel great state and how that feels. What are you doing at that moment?

What leads you to feel this way. Just notice for future reference and keep being in that state for as long as you can, even when you take a mental break its even easier to come back, because you know the feeling.

So when you want to do that again, it becomes easier to get into this FLOW state.

Now all there is to do is practice being in the flow and replacing any state other than this to be in flow…