Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes
This is the eighth in a series of articles about Flow. In each of the articles I’ll look more closely at Flow, each of the individual characteristics, and how we can use Flow in our leadership practice.
In the first article of the series, I talked about the idea of Flow as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 
Activities that provide Flow experiences provide us with the opportunity to control our own actions. Our participation in these activities makes it so that we don’t need to question our own performance. We feel as though we are at the “top of our game”.
We Can Only Control Ourselves
We aren’t able to control the environment around us, things like whether it’s going to rain on us. We also don’t have control over what the actions of others are going to be, such as whether those around us be helpful or harmful to our pursuits.
When we are experiencing Flow, we find that we don’t need to be in control of the things going on around us. The reason for this is that we end up with an overwhelming feeling that we can’t fail.
This is actually a little too simplistic of an explanation. In reality, it’s not so much that we feel we can’t fail. It’s more that we feel in such total control of our own actions that we know that if nothing external gets in the way, we WILL succeed.
If something should come along and get in the way of our success, that’s ok too because we know that we have performed at our best and since we were able to experience Flow during the activity, we know that we have grown in the process.
We Need to Own Our Behavior
The lesson to being able to have a Flow experience is to take total control of our own situation; to “own” our behavior. No one can own our behavior but ourselves and when we are able to understand that, we are able to be in control of our performance in a given situation.
The reality is we can never really be in control of those things around us, so when we stop focusing on the external things and focus on ourselves, it makes the activity we are engaged in seem that much easier.
Keep in mind, that I’m not suggesting that when we are able to experience Flow we can’t fail because we certainly can. What I’m saying is that in these situations we are so focused on our own activity that it becomes about the activity and not about the outcome. We no longer worry about failing because it doesn’t matter to us.
When we become so focused on the activity in the present moment that the activity itself become what’s important and when we are in total control of our performance, we know we are doing our best. More times than not when we are able to do our best we succeed.
Leader’s Reflection: When we are able to experience Flow on a regular basis we are able to live a happy and satisfying life. When we are able to experience Flow in our everyday work we find the work more satisfying. When we participate in an activity that is generating Flow, we are no longer worrying about failing. We are so focused on our own performance that the activity itself becomes what is important and we give up trying to control the environment around us.
