How to find your flow state when you’ve lost it

Hey, it's Mariel Segarra, you're listening to Life Kit. We have a treat for you today. NPR Health and Science correspondent Allison Aubrey has a new show called Your Turn. It's here to help people navigate midlife and to figure out what's next for them. So today you're going to hear an episode about flow, that state of euphoric, effortless immersion in a challenging task, and how a flow state can help you find purpose and momentum in your life. Here's Allison. I think if you have ever felt stuck in life, like you've been doing the same thing for so long, Diane Allen's story is really going to resonate. She played violin for the central organ symphony orchestra for about 15 years. She was what they call the concert master. You know, so many people don't even know what that word means. So the concert master is the lead violinist, second in command to the conductor. And if you think about how an orchestra is set up, think of dominoes because I'm right up front with the conductor and however well or not well, I was doing that day, that would have a ripple effect throughout the orchestra. So if I'm having a great day, that's going to ripple out throughout the orchestra. If I'm having a band day, that's going to ripple out. So it was always expected to be at the top of my game, always, deeply engaged. How many hours a day were you spending playing music or in these roles as you describe leading, help leading the orchestra? During the week of an orchestra concert, we would have rehearsals every single evening. And we would do, I think it was three shows over the course of the weekend to satisfy demand. In between, I was teaching violin. So I would have violin students all day long on Monday through Friday. I mean, the violin was everything to her. I mean, she did it morning, noon, night, and she had played in so many concerts. In one night, she was preparing as she had done many, many times, and she suddenly felt off. I turned around and said, "Ten, give a big cue for the music to start." And I couldn't move. For some reason, I had a stress response that prevented my arms from being flexible. My elbows were frozen. At that moment, she was completely caught off guard. She certainly did not have words for it. She just knew it was this terrifying feeling. I literally was saying myself, "Just keep moving, just keep moving." My colleagues were looking literally eyes over the music stand completely open, staring at me like we can't hear you because I was using such a tiny amount of my violin bow that the sound wasn't producing and feels like an hour, it really only took about a minute for me to regain the full use of my arms. But then there was this disconnect. I was just playing the notes. I could not feel the music, and I could not figure out why that would even be. And I literally felt like my reputation and job security were going to be at stake if I couldn't crack this nut. I mean, music is central to Diane's identity, and this started very early in her life. Do you remember a moment early in those years when you first started playing violin where it really clicked? I'm 15, and I'm in my room, and I'm blasting the music, and you know, I'm not listening to rock and roll, of course I'm listening to a violin concerto. And I had this full on, you could call it a daydream, I really think I was having an intense flow state experience. So she uses that word flow, and it totally catches my ear. Now flow is that feeling that makes you feel completely absorbed in whatever you're doing, like you're lost to the moment. But it's also a scientific term where I literally felt like I was the soloist. I was pouring the core of my solo into every note I play. I even remember the gown that I was wearing and the twinkles on it, right? But now here she is, she's an adult, she has tons of experience performing on the violin, but suddenly she can't find it anymore, she can't find that feeling. I'm sitting on stage playing a Beethoven Symphony without any emotion or any flow. And there was a lot going on in her life at this time, a lot of the things that hit many of us in midlife. My son was at the height of his teenage rebellion, my mom had Alzheimer's, and I was just going through the motions. I felt like a piece of cardboard just dead inside, numb, right? My students started leaving me for other teachers. They were sensing that I was off, and it was a really, really dark time. And so she decides to call it a day. She quits the orchestra. And I apologize to the conductor and I said, I'm sorry, I will not be able to be of service because I'm not in a state where I can serve. I think as women in midlife, we can all relate to that feeling. I'm Allison Aubrey, and this is your turn. It's a new podcast that will hopefully feel kind of like a roadmap for midlife. We're going to talk about all the twists and turns of navigating this often messy next stretch, the obstacles, the opportunities. My plan here is to pair science with wisdom, and I want to hear your stories. So I'm glad you're here. In this first episode, we will explore the science of the flow state. You know that feeling when you look up from something and you realize hours have gone by, that's flow. And in midlife, it can be an important signal, paying attention to that feeling, or maybe returning to the things that brought you that feeling early in your life. This may be one of the best clues you have about where you want to go next. We're going to hear more from Diane Allen, who lost her flow and then was trying to find it again, and also from Richard Husky, who studies the flow state and how each of us can find it. My name is Richard Husky, and I'm an associate professor at the University of California Davis. Richard Husky is a communication and cognitive scientist who studies what happens in the brain during flow. My lab studies a lot of things, but we're generally really interested in motivation, why people persist when things get really difficult, why we can find really difficult things enjoyable, and we typically study that from a framework that draws on something called flow theory. So an easy way to explain what he does is he takes pictures of a person's brain when they're doing an activity that can put them into flow, and he's trying to understand like what's happening in the brain, like what parts of the brain are working together or differently, that might explain why flow can elicit the feelings of almost bliss or euphoria. There's all sorts of different names that flow goes by. Secret to happiness, an ultra-state of consciousness, a peak performance period, really all of these things kind of circle around a key idea that flow is this optimal experience, and it's an optimal experience that feels like five things. The first one is, you lose a sense of time. During flow, it feels like the time passes by really, really quickly. The second thing is that people lose a sense of self. So when I'm experiencing flow, I'm not busy thinking about the dishes or that meeting and how it went, and if I did it right or wrong, I'm really focused on the flow task itself, not my own inner monologue. There's also a feeling that you're in control. Flow feels incredibly in control. We know what we need to be doing while we're experiencing flow and we're doing it quite successfully. Number four is that when you're in the flow state, it doesn't feel physically or mentally taxing. This is sort of like the runner's height, right? If you look at marathon runners, sometimes around like mile 18, they can even have a really giant smile on their face, but you know, it doesn't mean the marathon isn't taxing. They collapse across the finish line, but in that moment, they're not feeling all that physical or mental taxation. And at finally, number five, flow leads to a euphoric state. Just like the runner's high, flow feels incredible. You can feel exhilarated, elated. Flow is a highly rewarding experience that we often do for itself. So first, let's take just a minute for a brief history of flow theory. There was a scientist, his name was Mihai Chiksetniai. He was a Hungarian-American psychologist, and he coined the term flow. He introduced the idea with the book titled Beyond Bordom and Anxiety back in 1975. And in the book, there were artists and athletes who described the flow state as a kind to kind of being carried along with the water or carried by the flow. Now, Chik Setni Hai had a hold. a whole bunch of collaborators, and he went on to publish a best-selling book in 1990. So the question for us is like, how do we find flow? How do we actually achieve this flow state? - There are sort of three circumstances under which for most likely to feel flow. And those are instances where we have really clear goals. We know what we need to be doing and why we're doing it and what success looks like. We're getting very immediate real-time feedback and about our progress towards achieving those goals. - Like feedback from within or feedback from outside. - Oh yeah, cool question. So feedback from both. So external feedback, I did something and it either worked or didn't. Or some monitoring about how well you're working towards accomplishing a goal. So monitoring, if you're a musician, where you are in the song and monitoring, oh, the next difficult part is gonna be coming up and you need to be ready for that, things like that. And then the last part is a challenge and skill balance. So things need to be difficult. Flow experiences don't happen for simple tasks. So there needs to be a balance. The task needs to be quite difficult and our skill at that task needs to be quite high. And when we have all those three things together, we should experience flow. - I wasn't even taking the violin out of the case. - This is Diane Allen again. And at this point in her life, she thought she was finished. She thought the violin was something she'd never touched again. - I had a gorgeous, gorgeous antique violin that had been my musical voice for decades. I was so done, I sold it. I sold my musical voice. That must have been a hard moment. It wasn't, I was done. But I think it was so shocking to other people. I was like, I really am moving on. - When we think about our sources of flow, we grow throughout our lifespan. Things that were initially difficult get easier, our skill increases. Sometimes that's a technical skill. Sometimes it's a cognitive skill. I hear writers talk to me about how their writing quality continues to improve over their lifespan. And then they have to be doing more technically difficult or more creative writing pursuits to recreate and feel that flow experience. So flow experiences happen and change across our lifespan, not just because of some physical characteristic of our everyday life, but also some cognitive characteristic of who does that we are. - So when you study flow, what are you looking for? Like can you actually measure this state of flow in the brain? - That's what we've been trying to do. So as you might imagine, I've described all of these really complex, complicated tasks, snowboard and creating art, making music, cooking, doing yoga. Those are all the sort of things where we find flow in our everyday life that are really difficult to bring into the research lab, especially what my lab does, which is functional neuroimaging. We take a very large MRI and we try to scan your brain while you're experiencing flow, which can't do yoga when you're doing that. - Or snowboarding. - Certainly can't snowboard. And so what we try to do is find alternative things that I can have you do while in a big scanner that might still elicit flow. And for us, that is usually having people play some sort of video game. In his earliest writings, chicks let me how to describe games as excellent flow experience. Why? Because you can control all of those things that we think cause flow. And so we put people into the scanner, we scan their brains while they play video games and we look to see what is their brain doing when they're experiencing flow. - And when Husky and his team looked at these scans, they saw two distinct parts of the brain that are very active during the flow state. The first is the part of the brain that allows you to plan and also to control your behavior. The second is the part of the brain involved in reward processing. - We see that those two parts of the brain are actually really well connected. It seems like the part of the brain that is giving us information about reward is talking to the part of our brain that's giving us the ability to control our actions and behavior and says keep going, keep doing this, this is worth doing. This is feeling great. This is worth your time and energy. - And when you first saw those results, like as a scientist, what did you think? Like, aha, this is telling us something? - That was actually a flow experience for me. If I'm really honest, it was late at night in the lab, everybody had gone home and I was sitting at my computer and this analysis that I had been working on for months finally wrapped up and I saw these findings and it was just this really kind of incredible experience. I don't know how to describe it. For the very short moment, I knew something about the world that nobody else did. - What did you see in these brain scan results that made you go, aha, there's something here. There's something magical about flow. - One of the tests that we were trying to do was to understand why flow doesn't feel physically or mentally taxing at least in the moment. We described that flow is a high difficulty task that requires a tremendous amount of skill. You should expect that that feels challenging because it certainly is. And one of the things that I discovered that night was that when we are in flow, a brain is actually reconfigured into a metabolically efficient or energetically efficient state. A brain is actually using a little bit less energy when we're in flow even though the task is really difficult, we're putting a log of cognitive resources to it. The brain is reconfigured itself into a state that is using a little bit less energy and maybe that's explaining why we're not feeling that taxing demand when we're experiencing flow. - Wow, wow, and wow. Because what you're saying, if I'm hearing this correctly, is that doing the thing that you love, the thing that makes you feel euphoric, even when it's taxing actually is requiring less of you because your brain is sort of reorganizing itself. Is that right? - That's right. And this is something that neuroscientists see regularly associated with mastery. When you're learning something new, the brain marshals all of its resources to try to figure out how to do that new thing. It requires a ton of energy. It's really mentally taxing and mentally demanding and your brain is expending all this energy trying to figure out how to just do this brand new thing. But with practice and skill acquisition as mastery emerges, we actually see that the brain kind of figures out, oh, I don't need to be doing this thing to accomplish that task successfully. I can spend a little less energy on it. And so your brain figures out this optimal configuration as you work towards mastery. - After the break, how to find your flow if you've lost it, we'll be right back. - I couldn't believe how deep I was in a dark place. - So back to Diane. And at this point in her life, she's not great. She's feeling overwhelmed by family obligations caring for her mom, her son. And she's quietly asking herself something that so many of us wonder in midlife. Like, who am I now? - So often we are like the frog in the water. We don't know how stifled we are or how much we have to put ourselves aside to take care of our family. Then one day she goes to see this documentary. It's about the founding of Meow Wolf. Meow Wolf started as this countercultural kind of DIY group that basically was repurposing junk into art. And they would create these big art installations and throw big parties and inviting people to come experience the art and do with it what they wanted. You could walk into a secret passage. There'd be neon blinking, touchable hands-on art. It was all so new to Diane. - They were questioning who to say that this is art. Who to say this is not art. Who to say this art that you see in Santa Fe galleries is what's valuable. This is what art is. - And remember, she's used to the kind of rigid world of orchestra, of classical music. And suddenly she's going like, oh my God. Like, whoa, like this can be art. She used to say that what we do is not art. They were questioning everything. And it was so thought provoking. I could not sleep that night. I was thinking about it and thinking about it. And she's feeling like she's ready to explode. Really, I felt like my brain had been shaken up like a snow globe in a good way. - She's got so much bubbling up inside. And music had always been to take what was on the inside her. and share it with the world. And when I woke up the next morning, I felt like this power of the violin coming back into my life. So she runs back to the violin, the thing that she knew how to play. I called my friend Janet who was on stage with me the day that my elbows froze. And I said, can I borrow a violin? She comes right over that morning. And so I played some Bach and I was like, no. And I played a pop tune. It was Leonard Cohen's hallelujah is what I played. And I was like, oh, I'm not done playing the violin. I'm done with classical music. I mean, it was this complete revelation. You know, she threw the baby out with the bath water. She knew how to play this instrument. And though she was giving up on being a concertmaster, on being a classical violinist, suddenly she had this new way to express herself with the same instrument, using the instrument in a completely different way. - You've got composers from a lot of different European countries. You've got composers from a lot of different eras. And when you are a classically trained musician, you're expected to play Beethoven a certain way. You're expected to play Haydn a certain way. And Beethoven, you could lay into it, play loud. Haydn is very light and delicate. And the way I like to describe it is that if you were to learn a foreign language, okay, it might be endearing if you have an accent. But if you have an accent in your classical music playing, it is shunned. You have to put your voice aside and you have to sound like you don't have an accent. Does that make sense? - Think about it. When you sit in an orchestra, your one job is to blend in, to be a perfectionist, to play the notes that somebody else has written. And then suddenly she's thinking to herself, whoa, I get to have my own accent here. - And I came alive. Okay, here comes the cheers again. - I was a concertmaster again. - So playing Leonard Cohen was kind of like a first step. - I started writing my own music. That was the game changer, Alison. That was the game changer. When I started writing my own music, it just made all the difference. I think that the authenticity was missing. This is actually Diane playing her music. She's thinking, aha, if I can lose my flow and find it again, this is a form of magic that I want other people to know about. So interestingly, this sort of turns her to using her words to describe finding flow. So she started giving keynote speeches, combining her music and telling her story about finding flow again. - And when I brought all those pieces together, man, everything since then has really taken off. I felt like I was using my voice. I wasn't trying to fit into somebody else's music. And what's very interesting is, is I could play my own music over and over and over again, and I don't get sick of it. - So I took Diane Allen's story back to Richard Husky and asked him for some practical advice. How do you think someone can find flow if they feel like they've lost it? For people who are in the midst of a transition and they're saying, I want that feeling of euphoria, I want that feeling that my life matters, that I have purpose, that there's joy and adventures to look forward to, how is it? Like what's a good on ramp to finding your flow again? - This is a great question. And the first piece of advice I would offer is don't think that you need to pick up something brand new. I mean, you can, but if you do, you need to be really patient with yourself. And so I'll give you an example of this. I've been working on developing a yoga practice. And yoga for me is not typically a flow experience. And for a really long time, it was never a flow experience. But I had knee surgery. I had to rehab an injury and my doctor and physical therapist told me that taking up yoga would really help. And I at first thought, oh, everyone talks about yoga is this incredible flow-like experience and I wasn't getting that for myself. And I just needed to develop the skills. I needed to really build up a base with my practice where I could even begin to feel flow. And so I say this example of not turning you off of yoga, but rather, if you are starting something brand new, be patient with yourself. Give yourself a little bit of grace because flow requires high skill. When you're initially starting, you probably don't have those skills. So a second piece of advice is fine time to reprioritize something that you already love and enjoy. I'd love to spend all my time snowboarding, but I can't do that for all sorts of reasons. But one thing I have been able to reprioritize in my own personal life is cooking. I've been able to make a little bit more time to do that regularly. And that's the way for me to find flow. If you can take passions and activities that you already have and dedicate a little bit more time to them, I think that's one of the best places to start. Doesn't mean you can't pick up new things. Of course, you can, should. But if you do try to pick up something new, be patient with yourself because it might not be a flow experience at least initially. Do you think that the skill challenge balance is an important part of finding flow? - 20,000%. So that is a yes. Diane has actually become something of a flow expert herself. She gives talks on how to help people find flow after they've lost it. - When I share this, when I speak, the light bulbs go off in the room. A skill without a challenge is not going to ignite anything, a challenge without a skill is not going to ignite anything. It's the two together that activates flow. So what was your purpose when you were feeling the music as a young concertmaster? And juxtapose that with the purpose that you have now, writing your own music and having the orchestra back you up. Is the purpose the same? - No, I think I was finding myself when I was young. And so when I had that moment, I was like, yes, this is me, this is me. This has been that thing I've been chasing for all these years. My purpose now, as opposed to when I was 15 years old, when I was finding myself, is sharing the message and sharing the experience with people. And if by chance I can help somebody to change their life in some way, to have some sort of paradigm shift, where they can be at the top of their game, love what they do, then that's 10 out of 10 purpose for me. - I think a lot of people in midlife, people who are seeking or asking, and what's next, there's a sense that, you know, you've been in this sort of grind of obligation, like parenting and working and parenting and working, and you haven't had really time to think about these kinds of activities or hobbies or passions that might make you feel euphoric or feel in the flow. Even when we're not working anymore, I think that we really are still searching for meaning and momentum and a sense that our life has direction. - I love this. Were you listening in on a conversation, a friend, and I were just having the other day? Because I swear, like, oh my gosh. Again, what we're just testing is-- - Was somebody hit in midlife law? (laughing) - Yes. Well, we were talking about when not too long ago, when we were a little bit younger and just getting started in our careers, it felt like it was really easy to fixate and focus on all the things we weren't doing and kind of beat ourselves up over that. It was really easy to imagine all the things that we really should be doing if we wanted to achieve this nebulous whatever, right? But fast forward a little bit to today and there's been a bit of a cognitive reframe. It's not thinking about all the things that have it done or that are still ahead of me that I wanna do, but actually it's about making time for myself. All those, when I focused all the things I wasn't doing, I very infrequently focused on the things that I also should be doing, which was taking care of me, trying to take care of my health and my life and both physical and mental health. And I think that that's something that as we think about midlife and aging is really critical for thinking about the role of flow. It's something that helps us physically, it's something that helps us mentally, it has these benefits where we are able to stay more resilient to deal with stress a little bit better, to deal with burnout a little bit better. And so if you say to yourself, oh, I don't deserve this, that's a bit of the wrong attitude because not only one, you do deserve this, but two, by seeking flow out, is more likely that you will live a richer, more fulfilling. more satisfied and happier resilient life. It is that same as the 15-year-old experience that I had, but it is so greatly amplified. So for Diane Allen, like everything she loved about music as a child, as a young adult, is now fully expressed in what she's doing today. She has parlaid her skills and her talents with classical music, and something new. She returned to the thing she loved, but she uses the instrument so differently. It's giving her lift, it's giving her mid-life momentum. I know that there's that ripple effect, like I have with the orchestra, right? However, while I did, it would ripple out throughout the orchestra, and so I'm experiencing that on a grand scale. Having the voice and being visible are things that stop people in their tracks, and I think I've been peeling the layers of this onion for decades, and it just keeps getting better. I really think that there's a lesson here for all of us, and I think the flow state can help us see it. In mid-life, you don't have to completely reinvent yourself. You can go back to the things that you've been doing for decades, or something you may have mastered as a kid, or a young adult, and you can ask, "How can I use that now? What is it that's inside of you that makes you feel alive, that brings you joy, that can make you feel blissful, and how can you use it today in a way that's different from the way you've used it in the past?" Your turn is a production of WVUR in partnership with NPR. It's hosted by me, Alison Aubrey. Our producer is Carrie Thompson, sound designed by Fred Greenhall, project manager Lindsey McKenna. Your turn's showrunner is Eric Mennell. Our executive producer is Ben Brock Johnson. Like in this episode, courtesy of APM, and Diane Allen, composer and performer, Fommy Farhan, a ranger. And we would love to hear from you. What kind of challenging or exciting mid-life questions are you facing? You can write to us at your turn at WVUR.org. And we may picture voice or your story in an upcoming episode. And please be sure to review the show on whatever podcast app you use. Until next week, I'm Alison Aubrey. Thanks for listening.