Flow

In his extensive writings on the subject, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly describes the sensation of Flow and the mindset required to achieve it. Flow is a key component to Pilot Fire, and when you steer your life by setting goals, developing your roles, and making plans, Flow is the reward that helps you know you are on the right track. Many people describe Flow as the optimal state of well being, complete worry-free engagement with the task at hand. I describe it simply as,

“Losing yourself doing something you care about.”

If you want to dig in, start with this article: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Tells Us How to Go with the Flow

Image by Jean-Marc Astesana

How to Find Flow and Make Progress with Smart and Sexy Goals

“A goal is just a measuring stick for my future failure,” she says. So she never makes goals. I don’t blame her at all. Who wants to fail? What if you knew you’d make progress taking the next step toward you dreams? What if you could almost guarantee you’d lose yourself in concentration? And what if

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Another Way to Focus, Practice the Triggered Reset

What if we could shift our attention away from pain, noise, shiny objects, and idiots and focus on what we want to focus on, no matter what? Here’s the experiment for your Week’s Plan and a great goal for the Pilot: Create a trigger and practice a reset ritual. The bigger goal is to build focus

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We Love a Good Race, so Why Not Make the Race Matter?

The prominent poll aggregators had been predicting Obama’s victory Tuesday night for a while,† but if we completely believed them, fewer of us would have been motivated to vote, and the evening’s television wouldn’t have been nearly as thrilling. We love a close race much more than a trouncing. As a San Franciscan I didn’t bump

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Reconciling Lao Tzu, Ego, and the Autopilot

My t’ai chi teacher, Martin Inn, used to describe a teacher of his who claimed to have no attachments to the past or the future. He seemed to embody the Taoist roots of t’ai chi, removing all intention, all ego, all attachment to outcome and previous experience so that all of his attention was focused

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Get Out of Doubt: Three Steps

Unrelenting Doubt, like disproportional Debt, is paralyzing. It’s worth making it a high priority to get out of Doubt as quickly as possible. A Pilot Fire dabbler sent me a note a while back: “I am stuck— I live in my head. I have lots of ideas and lots of things I want to do,

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Find Flow at the Edge of Frustration

One fundamental condition of Pilot Fire is to learn how to embrace the sublime, frequently. Making a life that aligns with our values, taking action to serve our beliefs, and achieving our goals is not enough. Our daily lives must also bring us moments of deep joy. I personally know a virtuosic musician who compares

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Three Factors for Finding Flow

Nebulous aspirations, visions of grandeur, and vague wishes for a better life can sometimes give us fleeting moments of pleasure; yet, when they remain ungrounded in reality, they can also lead to frequent disappointment or worse— discouragement. How we express our dreams, how we craft our goals, and how we tell ourselves what we are

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Tells Us How to Go with the Flow

Sex, drugs, and rock & roll are just like computer programming, right? Oh, and reading or having a great conversation? Pioneer in the field of positive psychology and champion of creativity, curiosity, and a life of meaning, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “Me high. Chick sent me high!”), wrote the books on Flow, the sensation of complete immersion. In his

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