Here’s a Riddle…

Everyone has experienced me, but few people know how to find me.  I cannot co-exist with anxiety, fear, anger… or multi-tasking.  I don’t cost a dime, but if I could be bought, people would pay small fortunes to create me.  I can show up any time, any place, and during any activity.  I am the difference between “good” and “great.”  What am I?

The Answer

I am ‘Flow.’  The state of peak performance.  First proposed by one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, ‘flow’ is defined as:

The experience people have when they are completely immersed in an activity for its own sake, stretching body and mind to the limit, in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

It is the place where your attention, motivation, skill set, and the challenge before you collide.  The result is a joyous, productive harmony, where you are at your best – your most innovative, most productive, and most brilliant.  A ‘flow experience’ is often characterized by words like “rapture,” “timeless,” and “single-pointed-focus.”

Whoa.  Sound like a magic elixir?  Too good to be true?  It is not.  And it is a key differentiator between those who are “good” at what they do, and those who are recognized and celebrated as “great” at what they do.

Components of Flow

According to Csikszentmihalyi, there are three components that are necessary to generate a ‘flow state.’

1. One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals. This adds direction and structure to the task.
2. One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable of doing the task at hand.
3. The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows him or her to adjust his or her performance to maintain the flow state.

As can be seen in this graphic, flow state occurs when you have the courage to embrace a higher than average challenge, while, at the same time, stretching your skills to meet that challenge.

High challenge, but it requires low skill?
Flow is blocked and the experience instead is one of anxiety or worry.

High skill, but not a challenge?
Flow is blocked and instead the experience is one of boredom.

The Four Elements to Creating Flow

While a flow state can never be forced (how about that for an oxymoron?), you can intentionally set yourself up to create a state of flow by incorporating four key elements:

1. Intrinsic Motivation. Take on a goal or challenge that you are intrinsically-motivated to achieve.  This is different than a goal that motivates you because of an external reward (like money) or recognition (like an award).
2. Uni-task. Choose to create a single-pointed focus during the times you are working on that goal or challenge (no email, no phone, no multi-tasking).
3. Stretch. Select a goal or challenge that makes you stretch.  You know what that is – it’s the thing that keeps knocking on the back of your mind and it has the power to both excite and scare you at the same time.
4. Build skills. Is there is a system you need to implement, a mind-set you need to adjust, or a skill you need to build?  Do it.  Then get to work.

Where are you experiencing flow in your life?  What’s keeping you from having more flow experiences?  Is it time to change something up?

Share your comments and ideas at Creating Flow

Hmmmm… you know I’m not going to buy that one, right?   I proudly own the moniker ‘Big Idea Success Strategist’ — if I bought the “big thinking is for everyone else” excuse, I wouldn’t have much of a practice… or a Big Idea of my own.  The focus of my work with clients is in tapping hidden potential, transforming mindsets to inspire Big Thinking, and implementing the systems and structure to turn Big Thinking into successful action.  Fact is, I’m a sucker for a Big Idea, I can smell one from a mile away, and I know you have one… we all do.  You may just not have called it that yet.

What IS a Big Idea?

Big Ideas don’t always look like international phenomena.  They’re not always translated into billions of dollars, or impact millions of people.  And, in fact, sometimes Big Ideas aren’t even what you do, but how you do it.

Do these sound like Big Ideas to you?

• The choice to stop competing as if your services are a commodity (by the way, you do this by getting clear on what differentiates you in the market, and then you courageously integrate that differentiator into every aspect of how you serve clients… and the crazy thing is, when you do, you become more irresistible to those you most want to serve….).
• Refusing to live a divided life by inviting who you are into what you do.
• Heeding the ache to restructure your business to fit your evolving life (when you started your business did you have kids, were you juggling carpools, making lunches?  Is it time to change how you do what you do to fit who you are today, not who you were 10 years ago?).
• Launching a business grounded in purpose, passion, and profit.
• Your dream of collecting a lifetime of your intellectual capital into a book.

All Big Ideas.  All necessitate that you be authentic and courageous.  All invite you to be an innovator, a thought-leader, and a role-model.  All require that you care enough to take action.

Big Ideas don’t always start out looking big.  In fact, most of the time, they just start out looking like you doing what you do best and care about the most.  And they always start with small steps.

In the words of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, when talking about Facebook:

“The craziest thing to me in all of this, is that I remember having these conversations with my friends when I was in college.  We would just sort of take it as an assumption that the world would get to the state where it is now.  But, we figured, we’re just college kids.  Why were we the people who were most qualified to do that?  I mean, that’s crazy…. I guess what it probably turns out is, other people didn’t care as much as we did.”

And we all know how that story turned out.  What’s the first small step to your Big Idea?

Share your comments and ideas at “Big Ideas Aren’t For Commoners…”

If you found out that right now was actually not the most tenuous economic climate we’ve seen in decades, but was instead a time of huge possibility, would you be approaching your business, your clients, and yourself differently than you actually are?

In conversations with my clients—who are amazing thinkers, courageous risk-takers, savvy business people, and successful advisors—I’ve been hearing some insidious themes….

“Now is not the time to think about the possibility to innovate that is percolating in my business, I’m just going to nurture the client relationships I already have and hope for the best.”

“My clients are looking to me to ease their fears—I don’t have time to take care of myself because I’m taking care of them.”

“If I just keep my head down and keep doing what I’m doing, this is all going to pass and then I’ll have time to focus on cultivating the untapped vitality in myself and my business.  Right now, it’s all about survival.”

The Shackled Mind

I understand the allure of these thoughts.  They’re like a sedative for the would-be innovator in each of us, a tranquilizer for the part of us that wants to stand-out and claim our difference from the rest.  It’s scary enough to be a bold risk-taker when everyone is celebrating risk-takers, but it can be downright terrifying when everyone else is huddling together and doing their darndest to blend in.

I’m ready to shine a bright light on these cockroach-like beliefs.  In fact, I’m ready to go toe-to-toe and have a knock-down-drag-out-brawl with the inertia-producing perceptions that are shackling some of the most brilliant minds I know.

The Cross-over

Historically, a “cross-over” period is a time when the previously dominant way of viewing the world is in decline and its opposition is on the rise. Two notable such periods in Western history during which we experienced the great opportunities and growth that accompany a “cross-over” have been the time of ancient Greece and of the European Renaissance.

Do you think we might be in a cross-over period now?  Is it possible that the chaos that has been stewing in our economy for the last 2 years is just the outward sign that one view of the world is declining and its opposition is on the rise?

Emancipate Your Shackled Mind

What if you found out 50 years from now that right now was the best time to emancipate your brilliantly innovative mind, to cultivate the vitality lying dormant in your business, and to tap into the potential of your body and spirit?

… what would you wish you had done differently than you actually are doing?

Now… what’s stopping you from doing it?

Share your comments and ideas at Emancipate Your Shackled Mind

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and you’ve been buried in a project since 1:30.  You’re riding a wave of productivity and all your cylinders are firing–you feel energized and engaged, you’re thinking clearly, new ideas are flowing!

“It’s possible,” you tell yourself in a moment of reflective wonderment at all you’ve accomplished, “that I am indeed a genius!”

And then, it starts to happen—watt by watt, your brilliance starts to dim. The ideas that were flowing so freely before seem to be stuck in a holding pattern in your brain; you start to yawn and stare out the window; you check your email (maybe something interesting or important came in while you were wrapped up in your project?); and you find yourself wondering if anything new—and essential for you to know right now–has been posted on ESPN.com.

What happened to your wave of productivity?  Your energy?  Your pure genius?

Heeding the Call of Nature

Don’t worry, you’re still a genius!  You merely forgot to heed the call of nature (a-hum… not that call.  Read on…).

Just like nature is governed by cycles, so is the human body.  Most people are generally aware of the 24-hour cycles of sleeping and waking that are the major components of our circadian rhythm (“circa dies” means “around a day”).  Less commonly known, however, are the ultradian rhythms (“ultra dies” means “many times a day”) that occur in cycles throughout each day.  There are many ultradian rhythms (eye blinks, heart rate, hormone regulation, thermal regulation, etc.), some of which help to account for the energy cycles we feel throughout the day.

According to energy management gurus Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr in their book,  The Power of Full Engagement,

“Physiological measures such as heart rate, hormonal levels, muscle tension and brain-wave activity all increase during the first part of the [ultradian] cycle—and so does alertness.  After an hour or so, these measures start to decline.  Somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes into the cycle the body starts to crave a period of rest and recovery. Signals include a desire to yawn and stretch, hunger pangs, increased tension, difficulty concentrating, an inclination to procrastinate or fantasize and higher incidence of mistakes.”

Sound familiar?

Reclaiming Your Brilliance

It is possible to override this natural cycle with caffeine, sugar-leaden foods, or pure mental grit, but as it turns out, this is only a briefly and marginally effective solution.  Each time you ignore your natural cycles for engagement and recovery, your body summons its “fight or flight” stress response, digging deeper into your energy reservoir.  The resulting cascade of cell-damaging hormones has both short-term effects (racing heart rate, perspiration, fractured focus) and long-term effects (insomnia, gastrointestinal distress, heart disease, etc.).  It’s better to save that reaction for true emergencies.

Why not listen to your wise ol’ body and…

Heed the call of nature!

Try taking intermittent breaks every 90 – 120 minutes throughout your day.  The key is not how long a break you take, but that you truly change your focus.  Disengage from your task or project–get up from your desk and stretch, get a drink of water, take a walk around the block, or visit with a colleague (caution: in an effort to keep good working relations, before interrupting your co-workers, you may want to first make sure you have coinciding ultradian slumps).

Now that’s the call of nature I’m talking about.

Share your comments and ideas at 3PM Brilliance Slump

The human body is designed for action: hinging and rotating joints that support movement in every direction; strong, elastic ligaments and tendons that encourage play while keeping bones and muscles in their proper place; skeletal muscles that facilitate every movement from explosive jumping to flowing Tai Chi; cardiac muscle that tirelessly pumps nourishment to every cell in the body.

The human body thrives with regular cycles of activity and recovery. Active bodies are at lower risk for heart disease, obesity, various cancers, diabetes, and hypertension; and active people generally have more stamina, lower resting heart rates, more muscle tone and less body fat.

It doesn’t take a smarty to figure out that exercise is good for your body, but if it did, it turns out that exercise would be your brain’s ticket to that “smarty-dom.”

Miracle-Gro for Your Brain

For years scientists suspected that exercise and brain functioning were connected, but until recently, the only link researchers could assert with certainty was that aerobic activity increases the level of well-oxygenated blood pumping to body and brain, which leads to nourished body and brain cells. Makes sense… and it’s true. But, as new discoveries in the field of neuroscience are illustrating , the impact of exercise on the brain is far more complex—and more powerful—than just oxygenating brain cells.

According to recent research in the field of neuroscience, here’s a breakdown of what happens when you head out for that lunchtime run:

Muscles contract —>

Release of chemicals, including a protein called “IGF-1″ —>

IGF-1 travels to the brain and stimulates the release of several chemicals, including “BDNF”* —>

Regular exercise increases levels of BDNF —>

BDNF stimulates neurons (brain cells) to branch and connect in new ways —>

New junctions between neurons is the basis of learning

(*BDNF = “brain derived neurotropic factor”)

Take home message?

Bodies that exercise regularly stimulate brains to have higher levels of BDNF; brains with higher levels of BDNF have greater capacity for knowledge.

So, in the words of John Ratey, Harvard psychiatrist and author of Spark: The Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain, BDNF is like “Miracle-Gro for your brain.”

Smarts Tomorrow, Focus Today

Not sure you have the patience to wait for all those new neural-connections to validate your efforts to become a “regular exerciser”? Good news! Studies have shown higher circulating levels of thought-facilitating and mood-stabilizing neurotransmitters (namely, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine) within an hour of a bout of exercise.

Feeling antsy? Frustrated? Having trouble concentrating? Get up from your desk and get moving! It’ll help you focus today, and, string enough days of activity together and before you know it, you’ll be in BDNF-city.

Mensa application anyone?

Share your comments and ideas at Miracle-Gro For Your Brain

“The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.”
-Leonardo DiVinci

Creativity Crisis

Hip-hip-hooray!  Statistics from the International Labor Organization consistently indicate that workers in the United States put in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world.  We’re the tops!  Unfortunately, it’s also become apparent that “the most hours” doesn’t seem to be translating to “the most productive.”  And, adding insult to injury, there are low rumblings coming out of academia about the potential economic impact of a “looming creativity crisis” in America.  Increased hours, decreased creativity…. What are we missing?

Makes you ponder: when is the last time you struck genius while sitting in front of your computer responding to emails?

Jumping In and Out of the Playpen

We are a nation founded upon hard work and bright ideas.  We seem to have the “hard work” part down pat, but maybe we’re losing touch on how to harness those “bright ideas.”  In striving for the most efficient, time-maximized day, complete with laudable business success and leveraged social and networking interactions, many of us have bought into the belief that the harder you work, the more you will get noticed and success is certain to follow.  But is “nose to the grindstone” really the pathway to success?

A strong work ethic is commendable, but it is the inspiration of innovation combined with that work ethic that is the stuff of genius.  Looking to knock the socks off your next prospective client?  It is the creativity that will get you there.   Downtime is where ideas grow and dreams are fostered.   Want to come up with the next best idea on the market?   Get out of the office and get some play time in.   The most successful business leaders effectively and regularly put “thinking aside” and let ideas percolate with play.

Harnessing the Creative Process

So, where do those bright ideas come from?  They are born of the active and effective use of both the left (analytical) and right (creative) hemispheres of the brain.  There are five widely recognized stages to the creative process:

1)      First Insight (the light bulb of an idea)

2)      Saturation (the methodical gathering of information)

3)      Incubation (letting the idea grow)

4)      Illumination (the breakthrough—how it all comes together)

5)      Verification (analyzing and translating the idea from creative to actionable)

Of these five stages of creativity, only “saturation” and “verification” are sit-at-your-desk-and-analyze left-brain tasks.  The other three stages—from your first inspiration, to allowing your idea to percolate, to the final breakthrough of how to make it happen—all take place when you put your thinking aside and just let the right-side of your brain have a hay day.

Think about it.  What was the last great idea you had?  Where were you when it struck?  In the shower?  On a run?  Planting peas in the garden?

Enough thinking about it, Einstein, it’s time to get up and play!

Share your comments and ideas at Downtime… the Genesis of Genius