the Henny Flynn podcast
A space to settle in and listen — and see where the episode takes you. This gentle, reflective podcast is an invitation into deeper self-awareness with profound self-compassion. Henny shares insights from her own life, alongside practices that help us connect with our inner wisdom, explore our relationship with change, and find a greater sense of flow.
There are no fixed answers offered here — just space to be with what’s true, and to grow from there. If you’re drawn to slowing down, listening in, and exploring what it means to live with greater authenticity, this podcast is for you.
Guided by psychology, mindfulness, therapeutic coaching, flow journaling, and everyday compassion, we explore ideas that help us step further into our inner worlds.
the Henny Flynn podcast
Achieving Flow: Mindful Purpose in Modern Life, with Dr Sue Jackson (S15E7)
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How is it to experience the space where time & effort cease to exist?
Join us as we explore the concept of flow with Dr. Sue Jackson, a distinguished psychologist and author, who shares the wisdom of 30-years of research and brings her expertise across sports, business, education, and everyday life.
In this episode...
- We navigate the nuanced relationship between flow, perfectionism, and mindfulness (this was particularly resonant as I listened back & realised my mic appeared to be underwater as we were recording!)
- Drawing inspiration from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's pioneering work, we investigate how flow can provide a sanctuary of ease and deep attention in our often chaotic, multitasking work environments.
- From the influence of Buddhist principles to the power of being present, we reflect on personal experiences that demonstrate the transformative potential of flow.
- We also hear the importance of reducing self-consciousness to foster flow and authentic connection - with Self, with others and with the task at hand - amidst modern life's disruptions.
I love how Sue guides us through the art of balancing challenge, trust in ourselves and skill to avoid the pitfalls of anxiety and boredom, whether on the ski slopes or tackling a mundane household task.
This episode celebrates the universal appeal - and the essential nature - of flow.
READ MORE
Sue's book Experiencing Flow: Life Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, is available direct from her or Amazon UK, Amazon (US),
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Before we dive in today, I just need to apologise for the quality of the audio. Something appears to have happened with my mic and, rather than waste this amazing conversation, I'm choosing to share it with you and hope that the sound isn't going to be too distracting for you and that you can listen in flow. And that you can listen in flow. What does the word flow mean to you? Is it something that feels hard to attain, to achieve, to hold on to? Is it something that feels so familiar that, the moment you hear the word, your body softens? Is it something that makes you curious, something that you'd like to invite into your life a little bit more, perhaps? My guest today is Dr Sue Jackson. She is a renowned psychologist and the author of the book Experiencing Flow Life Beyond Boredom and Anxiety.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast the space for deepening self-awareness with profound self-compassion. I'm Henny, I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self-love. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. I just like to repeat that title. I think it's um, really inviting in so many ways that this unity between boredom and anxiety, and I've got a personal story around that which may or may not come through when I'm talking with Sue, but it involves skiing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, she is a pioneering researcher on the concept of flow and closely collaborated with the founder of the flow concept, um. She's been working in this field for over 30 years, mainly in the domains of sport, business, business, education, but also daily life as well. So I'm really looking forward to chatting with her, and I think you know, if you're familiar with the podcast, then you'll know that this concept of flow is something which is really important to me personally and particularly in relation to flow journaling. So I'm hoping at some point we'll be able to chat about that too, and I can see that sue is in the waiting room, so I'm going to let her in. So, sue, I am so delighted to welcome you here and actually, just from the few minutes that we've been talking about some of the kind of logistics of how we do this conversation, I already have a sense that this is going to be a really beautiful conversation. I feel I can feel the edges of flow already drifting actually, and that's nice.
Speaker 2:Thanks, henny.
Speaker 1:Thanks for inviting me on oh it's wonderful and, and I really I mean actually that conversation that we've just had about. Do we do this just as a video? Do we do? It with video as well.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear again sort of what you were just saying about how that can inform the way that we show up and how that informs the state of flow uh, sure, well, I mean, I guess it's not everybody's experience, but, like for me, um, I was just commenting that it's the end of the day here in Australia and, um, I'm a little on the tired side and that it's actually a relief to know that I don't have to put energy into the video side of things, because, as we'll talk about, one of the dimensions of flow is actually loss of self-consciousness, and I think I mean, another option is that I take my own visual image out of the picture, which would be fine too, and then I don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 2:So that's another way, I guess, of dropping self-consciousness. But, yeah, like I, we're just talking about how to have, you know, a nice conversation and we're obviously both interested in flow and um, so, yeah, we can, we can have the eye contact, which I think is important to like have a good conversation, but without having to sort of worry about, um, the self-consciousness side of things that creeps in when you are looking at yourself.
Speaker 1:Basically, and I think it's such a, it's such a lovely observation, because it's also one of those things, because we're so used to this form of communication these days we are yeah, it's since all the, the lockdowns and and the pandemic that maybe we actually forget that they're.
Speaker 1:Oh, there we go. I think we just sort of slightly had a hiccup in the connection between here and did you see that? Okay, we'll just carry on? Yeah, um, yeah, we'll just and it's just technology right, exactly, and I think that's that's also sort of one of the things is sort of losing our attachment to things being perfect. Yeah, again, that's that's also sort of part of what flow feels like for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfectionism and flow don't go together yeah, so there's something about that kind of acceptance of this is how it is, and for you and I to have this conversation, the most important thing is that we're comfortable and that we're present, and exactly that. So I think it was really interesting for me for me when I was um, looking at your book and recognizing, yeah, like I know, I know these things innately, I know the truth of what your research is demonstrating, um, and so I would love to, I would love to kind of dive in actually and just talk about what is flow. How do you describe what flow?
Speaker 2:is yeah, and I'm also interested to hear how you do, because I know you've recently written a book on a flow journal. Um, I'm interested to learn more about that. I know you've recently written a book on a flow journal. I'm interested to learn more about that, henny.
Speaker 2:So I recently published a book in June, so I think just after after yours perhaps and it's called experiencing flow life beyond boredom and anxiety, and it outlines the journey that I've taken with flow since I first learned about it in my graduate studies in North America, when I was studying at the time sports psychology, and I came across this book on flow and it was called Life Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's his first book where he describes this experience and I was like, yeah, I've had that experience and and yet I didn't know there was a language around it and um. So the book is really about trying to continue the legacy of um Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, or Mike's work, um, since his death a couple of years ago, because I think it's such a valuable concept, such a valuable psychological state for us to understand and to understand that it is accessible, as I'm sure you are well aware absolutely.
Speaker 1:I love that, that, the sense of accessibility, though there was a. There was a line in your book which I think I'm not sure whether that it's a line that mike coined or it's something that's come from your observations, your research but it's this line that um flow is the space where time and effort cease to exist, and that, yeah that's a good description of flow. Just saying those words, I feel in my system everything softens, settles, because the hard edges of time constraints and the hard edges of effort melt.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. Yeah, well, you've just described a couple of the characteristics of flow, which is this this sense of time changing in our perception, and also that concentration becomes more effortless, and I think that's kind of the maybe the signature characteristic of flow is the sense that you can focus on what you're doing without it requiring a lot of effort. Now it is requiring effort because, to say, focused on a task does, but in flow we're bringing all of our attention to what we're doing, and so then we drop some energy that we might otherwise give to self-consciousness, for example, like we talked about a minute ago, or to like the passing of time and you know how? How long has this gone, how much longer is it going, what's happening after this, and so on and so on, so that some of those sort of ways in which we tend to operate in the world drop away, because all of our attention is on what we're doing as we're doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a mindful approach, basically yeah, I mean I've got strong sort of buddhist uh principles, you know, drifting through everything as I listen to you and yeah well, please share them please well, I mean this, this sort of of like of being with. What is this willingness to be in the present moment, rather than the, the learned behaviors, beliefs, attitudes that often we can have, which is that we have to be kind of always on and always alert to everything that's around us?
Speaker 2:And always thinking about something.
Speaker 1:Always thinking about something, and so my background includes 20 years in a senior corporate job in financial services, very head-oriented, very much that kind of always on, always alert.
Speaker 2:this, um, this attitude of of being in that environment was very much that um, it was rewarded when you were multitasking it oh, I know, oh, I know I grew up in that, in that era too, and uh, you know, being women, we're supposed to be expert at multitasking, right and um, not that men don't do it well too. I'm sure if they're taught that it's important and and we definitely were in the 80s, it was like how to be effective, how to be efficient.
Speaker 1:Multitask as in learn to be constantly distracting yourself, exactly and then there's a book actually it springs to mind, which is called I don't know how she does it which I think came out maybe in the early 2000s, I think. So my son was born in 2001 and I think it was kind of one of those books that was about here's how to be a modern woman, to work and potentially, and you know relationships and family systems and you know all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Really he was saying that was a good way to be, yeah, okay yeah, yeah, I know I love that, so you're like really, um, yeah, that must have been enjoyable. Yeah, exactly, and this idea that like that, that it's possible to exist like that and actually.
Speaker 2:I well, you can exist like that, but it's about the quality of the experience and that's something that Mike and just for the listener, mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the person, the psychologist and the great thinker who founded the concept of flow. Hungarian, born and for ease of accessibility was known by Mike. So when we talk about Mike, we're talking about Mike Chiksomihai. Yeah, but he would always focus on how important the quality of our experience is. That was that, was you know what was behind his researching, flow and creativity and how to live a good life.
Speaker 1:And it feels to me that one of the most significant distinctions here is operating on the surface of things, which is like the it's almost like the inverse of the image of the duck, you know, paddling furiously under the water. It's almost like, actually, when we're multitasking our feet are up.
Speaker 2:It's all up to you Paddling furiously but probably drowning at the same time. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've never, literally never, had that, but it feels really resonant with how certainly how that felt to me at that yeah yeah, no, I.
Speaker 2:I distinctly remember like learning about multitasking and you know through self-help, through reading, through media, and how it was the way forward and how we have so much to do. So you better get good at juggling multiple things at one time. And I just made the comment about differences between men and women because it was perverted at the time, for whatever truth lies behind it, that women were better at it. So let's get them to do the multitasking.
Speaker 1:And what's the reality? Sue, you know with all of your research. What's your observation about the effectiveness of multitasking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, multitasking, basically, as you would be well aware, henny teaches us to be distracted, and being distracted in an ongoing way is stressful, it's unfulfilling, it's not enjoyable and also it's not that productive. And research would suggest that, in terms of brain research, that we don't multitask between one or more complex tasks, we're basically brain switching. So we're switching focus constantly. So we're teaching our brains to constantly shift focus rather than to sustain focus and if we don't sustain focus, we will not find flow, as I'm sure you well understand, because I, as I said, I'm also curious, as we talked about having a conversation around flow and, you know, hopefully the listeners that are interested in flow might gain something from hearing both of our experiences on that.
Speaker 1:I mean, I, I really want to uh sort of give some space actually to what you just said about. You know, if we're constantly distracting, we won't create the conditions where we can experience flow, and my reflection there is. I wonder how much this almost sort of obsession with the value of multitasking contributed to what we see more and more now about the, the very, very short, little span of attention that we have when we pick up our phone. We don't even know we're doing it. You know, and I observe it in myself, you know I'll be halfway through something and find my phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I totally understand and, like you know, people can't see my room, but I have two computer monitors, a laptop, a microphone microphone which I have put on silent and do not disturb. Have an iPad there as well. You know it's. It just goes on and on and on, and and that's the world we're increasingly living in and we're not going to be probably moving away from that anytime soon. And so technology allows you and I to talk right now, which is amazing. And technology is also a major source of distraction, and I think that's particularly concerning for young people, whose lives and social lives often operate that way, often operate that way in terms of you know, we see a rise in reported ADHD, people having problems paying attention. Well, that seems to have coincided with this increasing reliance on technology and the fact that you know social media is all about designing, you know platforms so that you will get a new image every few seconds and you'll jump from one thing to another and you'll get alerts and notifications. And, yeah, it's all about distractibility, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's, you know, and the people who are creating these apps and you know, social media, that they're really good at their job and so, um, you know, and as humans, we oh, it's like a little, you know, we know it's like a little dopamine hit, isn't it? It's like oh, and it just, and even just sort of, when we think about that, it keeps us up in this upper level and what we we're looking to do, I think, is drop down. And you know, you've sort of said about the work that I do and for me that word flow has been particularly resonant around journaling and the way that I have come to relish my own journaling practice and the way that I now teach others and the book that I write, which is In the Flow Journal your Inner.
Speaker 2:Wisdom.
Speaker 1:And for me, the experiences are dropping, dropping down. It's a dropping down into my body, um, where, rather than journaling, um, you know, from a kind of highly sort of cognitive and analytical place up in my head, I'm writing as a stream of consciousness which feels like it's coming from my belly rather than you know. So it's, and the experience is absolutely one where time is time, loses its context. So I could write for a very short amount of time or I could write for for much longer, and both would feel equally valid. Um, and the normal rules of writing don't apply as well.
Speaker 1:So for me, like, one of the things that I unlearned was, uh, the rules that I've picked up about how to write well at school. So when I'm learning, I don't use paragraphs, I just. For me, it kind of breaks the, it breaks the flow and the experience is very often, when I get to the end, I don't always reread it immediately. In fact, very often I don't reread it, I kind of allow the words just to fall on the page and shut the book. But when I return to it, I'll often be surprised by what's appeared, because it feels like it's coming from another part of me.
Speaker 2:Okay, another place and do you, do you, encourage people to handwrite versus type? Yes, I do for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then it's a somatic practice and I think it engages a whole lot. I think, you know, obviously for some people handwriting is really unfamiliar and and even, and then it's like, well, even more delicious. You know, break some of those boundaries of the familiar and and see how it is. You know, it feels very experimental and I think again, for me that sort of sense of flow is a yeah, so it comes back to what we were saying before. It's like it is what it is.
Speaker 1:So allow it, allow this experience to just to be, so allow the words to fall on the page without editing, without judging yeah yeah, and and I've been sort of reflecting on what is it that really helps me achieve a sense of flow when I'm writing a book or when I'm writing a podcast episode, for example, if I'm doing a solo episode? Yes, and it is this sense of like being willing to sink into myself, because when I'm up in my head it will not feel as authentic as when I'm down in my body.
Speaker 2:That's my observation yeah, well, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like I think we both have a particular interest in mindfulness and um, that's obviously a way of helping us to connect body and mind and and in my book I I write quite a bit about relationships between mindfulness and flow.
Speaker 2:As you know, mindfulness has been a great pathway to access this optimal state of flow, because we are getting out of our head and we're focused, but we're focused on the task and we're letting go of these other unhelpful things that often accompany us when we're doing things, particularly in the performance setting.
Speaker 2:So I work in performance psychology and a lot of the clients that I work with they're high performing clients and you know, being able to let go of some of those expectations and the self-consciousness and the sense of performance being evaluated and them being evaluated and so on, so that they can do their task more effectively but also enjoy it, like just taking away some of the stress, so that people that are high performers tend to have gotten into that area through some sort of love, intrinsic motivation for that, whatever that is, whether they're a sports performer, a musician, you know someone's profession, they've got a particular interest and they develop it. So being able to sort of touch into what that is when you're you're doing your best work, which I think is what flow helps us to do and that I love.
Speaker 1:That point you just made about the. It comes back to the self-consciousness, but also the kind of the uh, the questioning about um, questioning about um, uh, almost like the kind of performance anxiety that can come in any in anything that we're doing, whether we're an elite athlete or or um. My husband changed the taps on on our kitchen, on our bathroom sink, yesterday, and I think if I just really he won't mind me talking about this if I think how he might have approached that in the past, it would have been a much more stressful activity. He'd have been, he'd have been more judgmental of himself, he'd have and therefore worried more about whether or not he had the skills to get it right and therefore that kind of place um in a critic. You know all of that um. He might have made, uh, certain assumptions about his ability to get it right and therefore, uh, you know, almost invited in opportunities for it to go wrong.
Speaker 2:We can do that so easily.
Speaker 1:Whereas this time, what I observed was he just, without pressing at it, he'd worked. He just understood what needed to be done, trusted his own judgment and then observed the steps that he needed to take, followed them, and for me, in a way that feels like flow as well yes, for sure yeah absolutely okay, great yeah, because um flow can occur I've just mentioned, like high performers and and and like flow can definitely occur in those situations.
Speaker 2:But flow can occur in daily living tasks and and mike wrote about that in a book called finding flow the psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, published in 1997, and in other writings as well, and he and people from around the world looking at people in different cultures as well, different sort of ways of living um have explored this.
Speaker 2:This time of flow, when you get absorbed in what you're in and and what you referred there to in terms of the example with your husband was he had skills and he trusted those skills, and that's central to the flow model is a relationship between a challenging situation and your skills and your, in particular, your perception of your skills. So when you've got that balance right so you're challenging yourself but you bring an appropriate skill set and you trust that skill set, then you can focus on the task. So I think that's a really great way if people want to understand flow, to recognize that's actually the operational definition of flow that Mike often used was it's a challenging activity that you bring a skill set to and that, like the relationship, is such that the challenges are just slightly, slightly above the skills oh, I absolutely love that because I think there can be.
Speaker 1:I think it, if one is not, um, really really curious about this state or hasn't necessarily noticed it in oneself, it can be easy to dismiss a concept like flow, yeah, and as being like too passive or a bit too woolly, I don't know, a bit like if something isn't hard, it doesn't have value. There can be that sort of concept. Whereas I love what you just said about it's this idea that we're just, we're just um pushing ourselves enough, but not so much that, yes, flip into anxiety and that's the between anxiety thing that's it.
Speaker 2:that's the bit bit about Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. And that's what intrigued me was, when I saw the title of that book on a university bookshelf when I was researching my master's at the time, I was like, well, what lies beyond boredom and anxiety? And it just like took my interest, you know. And so boredom sets in if our skills outweigh the challenges and we don't have new challenges to keep us interested. On the other hand, what we tend to experience perhaps more of but I guess everyone's situation is different is that we have challenges and we don't necessarily trust ourselves, we don't trust our skills, and so, instead of being focused, we're anxious about is this good enough, am I good enough? And you know that just gets us into our heads and once we're there, we're no longer engaged in what we're doing.
Speaker 1:are we so Honestly, so I've've shared this, this story I'm about to share with you with others, really understood, but I sense that you will absolutely get it and actually it's making sense for me now. So a few years ago, we went skiing and I'd never skied before, or maybe like a tiny little bit, but not really and everybody else was reasonably competent.
Speaker 1:So they went off and I had some lessons and I was absolutely fine with the instructor and they basically said look you're, you're great, you know you're good enough, like you could go. I've been there, done that, yeah, been there. So I head up on the butt lift on the ski slope and I just thought, okay, I'm going to get off at the first stop and I'm just going to redo this run a few times. I've done with the instructor. I get off, I stand at the top. I'm just going to redo this run a few times. I've done with the instructor.
Speaker 1:I get off, I stand at the top, I'm feeling okay and I start going down and I get lower and lower and lower to the ground because I'm more and more terrified, which means I get faster and faster. My skis are up, you're a bomb. I have literally no idea how I'm going to stop when I get to the bottom by falling over, and I thought, okay, I can do this, I can do this. I go back up, I do it again, I get to the bottom. Pretty much the same thing happens. I take my skis off, I go back in the lift down to the village at the bottom of the mountain. I take it all back to the shop and the guy said are you sure you've only just hired it? And I said, absolutely. I found skiing to be a weird combination of boredom and terror. And Tara, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:I can just picture you becoming a bit of a cannonball as you got lower and lower to the snow.
Speaker 1:I was so fast. I'm a bit like that on a water slide as well, sue. I just get terrified. I'm becoming like a bobsleigh team, but anyway.
Speaker 2:I would have hoped the ski instructor might have told you about turning your skis and staying a little bit more.
Speaker 1:He totally told me I knew it all. But what had happened was the anxiety overcame. But how I translated it was boredom okay, right, it's like get out of this totally, yeah, yeah and I, and I think so. For me, it was like the antithesis of flow, whereas I know so many people who see skiing as being like the epitome of flow.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally yeah. So have you been back and skied again?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:No, and I won't. I mean, I'm pretty sure it won't happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it might not be skiing's your thing, but definitely sports like skiing and surfing would be another one. Um climbing, rock climbing and so on like they are environmentally challenging and you do need quite a high level of skills to to approach it. But you also need trust, like so you need the knowledge, you need the skills, but you need to trust that you can make that turn and and you can turn, point your skis uphill and you'll slow down and so on. But, like in those moments of terror, like we don't think that way at all and I think that's that's the thing, isn't it?
Speaker 1:the? The bit that was missing was my trust in myself, yeah, and and so when I and I understand from my own like deep work that I've done on myself, the, you know, lack of trust in my like physical capability, particularly then different now, actually, it would be interesting to see what it okay ski now, but maybe you might want to go back and try it again.
Speaker 2:Maybe I do now he's a shorter these days it's actually easier to ski. That's something that, um, I think, um, someone was pretty clever about making skis shorter from like. I used to ski quite a bit in the 80s and you know the idea was you'd get longer and longer skis because then you could go faster and turn quicker and so on and so on. And that was fine if you're going to be a ski racer, but if you're just a recreational skier and now it's gone the other way, like where skis are short and so it's quite easy to turn those skis, Very good.
Speaker 1:I now feel like I'm having a session with sports psychologist dr and not a ski instructor.
Speaker 2:They don't. Don't take on board too much. If there's ski instructors out there, they might be saying what is she talking about? I?
Speaker 1:mean you mentioned earlier about you. Um, when you came across mike's book, you recognized that you had experienced the state.
Speaker 2:That's it, yeah you'd share that story. Yeah, well, so, in beyond boredom and anxiety, mike um shares interviews he did with people in quite different contexts, including some athletes musicians, chess players and surgeons and so there's a chapter, like devoted to these different settings and this consistency of when one was totally focused on whatever one's activity, was a chess player or a surgeon, during a procedure. There was these similarities of characteristics that then Mike developed into what are known as the nine dimensions of flow, which are outlined in my book and in Mike's writings and um and so for me, like having having grown up an athlete and just loved sport all my life, you know I knew those times but I just thought it was random. Good luck if it had happened. You know that everything seemed to come together. It was much more effortless than what it normally was, and I tended to perform at a higher level, and I was just like and I tended to perform at a higher level and I was just like remember those times as being, you know, really enjoyable times, but I didn't know that I had anything to do with whether I achieved it or not. You know.
Speaker 2:You know, reason, as I said, for writing this book is so that people understand just how important the flow concept is, because there are ways. If we understand flow, then we can find ways psychological strategies, for example to make it more likely that we can experience it. So it doesn't have to be well, that was a randomly good day or a randomly bad day, like that. We can, and that's, I guess, what performance psychology or sports psychology initially the area that I was working in is all about. It's about teaching individuals and groups that we can all improve our psychological skill set that we bring to the tasks that we engage in, that we choose to take part in. We can all improve in that area, no matter where we're at.
Speaker 2:And even the athletes at the very top of their sport, they often they might even be presenting themselves as being full of confidence and often are but they also are sometimes doubting themselves, but trying as best as they can to hide that. Because, you know, as the skill level increases, the challenge increases. So there's always that sense of uncertainty, that sense of doubt that can creep in. And so it's learning how to stay focused, how to notice when attention has wandered and bring it back, which, as we would both agree, mindfulness, meditation is the excellent way to learn how to do that better and basically to notice if our attention is on task or not, because we develop the self-awareness through the mindfulness practice that we might not have had prior to actually recognize that we're just caught up in all of these thoughts about what happened and the injustice of it or what might happen and how terrible that would be, and you know, we can go through life that way.
Speaker 1:I think there's something about this how to recognize when we're drifting, when our attention is drifting off the task. And something that I've, you know for me is, you know, it's really important. When I learned this and that I will sort of teach others as a, so I also teach sort of mindfulness practices as well is that meditation is not about the empty mind and the perfect, you know, place of, uh, you know nirvana, it's about the moment where you go.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes that's the, that's really what we're looking for, and I think that's that feels really right really, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's such a misconception about meditation that I think, with the growth of mindfulness and and its recognition as being a very valuable skill, is hopefully being quashed this idea that, oh you, it's about getting an empty mind and then what might be put into that empty mind. You know, it's just like, yeah, it's, it's not what it is at all like. You know, the more you meditate, the more you notice how much your mind wanders and that you have to work hard to to bring it back.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I find, anyway, like for myself absolutely, and that and that it's okay, it's very it's okay. Yeah, and the the gift that the joy is is in noticing it and and still loving yourself. Through that, I kind of feel that. You know, you'll have seen, I think that all of my work is is about this grounding in self-compassion. Yes, I have. Yeah, you know that. As uh Richard Back said, you know we teach what we most need to learn. You know that my recognition that for a lot of my life self-compassion was pretty absent and that for me that is also part of flow so when I notice that I am drifting, I notice I've picked up my phone, hopped through something.
Speaker 1:Rather than beat myself up about it in the moment of noticing actually say, oh okay, I've noticed, I'll put it down. Or I've noticed and I'll carry on, and both of those are equally okay, because I'm making an active choice, um, in that moment, and then make a choice to return to whatever the task is but that makes good sense, yeah and so I think.
Speaker 1:So that's, I think that feels very resonant with me. And then the other thing I just wanted to ask you is um. So I noticed that there are, when I create certain conditions around me, flow feels more accept, uh, not acceptable more, um, accessible. And what are those conditions? So one would be music okay so a technique that I use a lot is I'll find a piece of music on insight timer.
Speaker 2:You know the meditation app yeah, I, I also use and I'm on it yeah you're on it, okay, oh, I'm gonna come and find you.
Speaker 1:Um, so I will find a piece of music that is the length of time that I want to focus on the task and I will play that piece of music and I find through, almost like a Pavlovian response, I drop in, okay, and I can pay attention to that one thing, and I just wonder whether there are, whether that's something you've come across, or if there are other sort of lovely sort of techniques or tools that experiment with yeah, well, definitely there.
Speaker 2:There is some research on music and flow and how it can be enhancing of flow. But what also you were describing there is one of the preconditions of flow, which is having clear goals. So, like, you set a time that you want to practice for, and so you don't have to then be thinking about how much time is passing because you're getting immediate feedback, which is another precondition to flow about. Yes, this is what I'm doing right now, this is what I chose to do, and so on. And then the challenge skill balance. So that's the third precondition. So the third precondition, again, the challenge skill balance. Challenge skill. Okay, yeah, so like what we talked about with the challenge skill balance. Well, it's actually the first first precondition, but then clear goals and then the unambiguous feedback, or the immediate feedback that you're getting.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, music. Music is definitely, um, a cue for many people and you know, choosing the music, that is the one that you're going to resonate with. But what you were describing to me was about having a clear goal in that activity that you wanted to engage in, and then you're receiving that feedback while the music's playing so I loved this in in your book.
Speaker 1:I loved the way that you talked about goals in the book, because for me, um, I shy away. So as a so I'm, you know, on the, the coaching end of of the spectrum.
Speaker 1:Um, and often in coaching, what is the primary concern is like what's your goal now? I often find that goals can be double-edged swords and I tend not to talk about them and I'll say, like what's the outcome you'd like to move toward, or how do you want to be feeling at the end of this? Now, that is a goal, but it's a slight, it's a softer edged thing, and also it opens up the opportunity that it might change as you move toward it.
Speaker 2:And that's yeah, that's goals in flow. It's not about, like, these specific outcomes. It's about, as Mike described it, it's about knowing, moment by moment, what it is that you want to be doing, that you've chosen to be doing, and then the feedback is letting you know. Okay, so this my goal is to be meditating and allowing the music to help me to get into that space, and so I'm getting feedback about that because I'm listening to the music, so my sense of hearing and so on is attuned to the music and what other senses you might be paying attention to during that practice, and so and so, yeah, it's not about setting a goal that you work towards and is inflexible and never changes, and if you don't meet the goal, it's a failure.
Speaker 2:Like that's, that's not it. I mean, that's not effective goal setting in any sense. But, like, in relation to flow, it's about more a moment by moment knowing what it is that's important for you. I think what I read in the book was something like that. It's about more a moment by moment knowing what it is that's important for you.
Speaker 1:I think what I read in the book was something like that it's the, the goal of the purpose of the process. Like that, the yes I think I might even have made a yeah you said not about outcomes, but about process and purpose, and that really resonated because it just felt like a much more adult way of seeing the task in hand, rather than, like you, say something that has a kind of binary outcome you either, you either achieved and you did or you didn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I definitely process goals are the way to go and you know, various psychology researchers have written about that in terms of growth mindset or mastery orientation, so being focused on the process versus the outcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not the destination, it's the glory of the ride that's a nice one.
Speaker 2:The glory, the glory of the ride, the glory of your ride down the ski soap yeah, exactly, or maybe one day too.
Speaker 1:Maybe you might have inspired a little, a little, uh, neural shift in my head. I um, one of the things sort of we kind of draw to a close. I knew this was going to happen. I could, I mean, this is flow, isn't it?
Speaker 1:we could sense about this for a long time whenever, whenever you want to talk, it's fine, like I'm good okay, well, you know, um, maybe we come back to to this topic again one day, um, maybe, maybe so, but I, I really wanted to just pay some some tender attention to the way that you talk about, mike and the influence that he's had on you just felt really important that he is honored in this conversation.
Speaker 2:For sure. Well, that's why I wrote the book to honor his work and him as a person, like he was, as his students and there's examples of things that some of his students have written in the book. You know he was the best example of what he worked in and what he wrote about and um and so, yeah, like I just highly encourage anyone that's at all sparked the interest in flow to um, look up chicks at me high, it's very phonetic but difficult to spell um and or just look up flow and um to read, read some of mike's works because, um, yeah, there's there's certainly a lot of really wise and and wonderful thinking in there. Um and yeah. So my book is um having I co-authored a book with mike in 1999, flow in Sports, with a shared interest of flow in the sporting area for both of us, and that was what my PhD was on, and he was one of the mentors to my work at that time and yeah, so that was designed towards performance, and this book is more about the flow experience and why the flow experience matters and, according to what Mike taught me about why it matters, which is equally if not more about the quality of experience as it is about a performance outcome.
Speaker 2:So I distinctly remember reading that in his writings quite a bit. He was concerned about how to help people live the best life they could, having come through war as a child and experienced the horrors of war in Europe and was very motivated to find ways for people to be able to live a life where quality of experience mattered and that recognising that you can do something about what your quality of experience is, even in times of adversity.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing is even in times of adversity, amazing, amazing. I mean honestly, there's so much um, uh, there's so much meaning in in the way they speak about him and and I can hear you know how inspiring he was for you and I'm everyone that he taught and and worked with, so yeah, yeah that's so much for sharing that, sue.
Speaker 1:And yeah, no, thank you, I, um, I will, I will share, obviously. I'll share a link to to your book, um, in the notes, just so everyone knows that they can. Um, come and have a look at at your work. And also I'll share mike's name uh, fully spelled, great idea. I love that phonetically it's chick sent me high, I mean, just you know what a gorgeous name. Um, and and there's, there's one last question that I'd like to ask you, which is something that I ask all of my clients actually before we start working together, and something I like to ask my guests. So, if you saw this time in your own life right now as a chapter in your book of life, what would your chapter heading be? What would the chapter, what was the question? If you saw this time in your life as a chapter in your book of life?
Speaker 1:what would the chapter heading be oh the chapter heading.
Speaker 2:Wow, I think, revisiting what matters.
Speaker 1:That's nice. Can you say what the subheading might be underneath that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I spent many years in academia because I enjoyed research and writing and I wanted to do that in the area of flow, but I didn't actually find it a very rewarding experience a lot of the time I mean not all of the time, but not a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:And so then when I shifted into why I initially studied sports psychology, which was to work with performers and to try to help people maximize their optimal mindset, optimize their experience, enjoy what they're doing more, be less stressed about it, like I guess that's what I've come full circle towards doing at this later stage of my career and, um, and I'm glad that I did, and I'm glad that I got back to writing because I always have loved reading like I talked about being an athlete and finding flow in sport, but also as a young person in reading and reading fiction that like I'd read a book and finish it and then I'd start it again and I'd just like get totally absorbed in yeah, so like Watership Down, for example, like I had to sticky, tap the front and back cover because it was like just kept getting turned so many times, yeah, and then that would lead me to like tap into imagination and creativity. You know a book like Watership Down, for example, and so I see myself in the story and so on. And so I see myself in the story and so on, and yeah, so like, and that's like you're getting totally absorbed in what you're doing. Yeah, and then I could find that sometimes in writing, but only if I was writing something that I really cared about and I guess flow, something that I've always cared about since I learnt about it. And so writing this book has been many years in the making, um, as a thought, um, but you know, finding time to do it, and then deciding, yeah, it matters enough that I'm going to do it, and, and I'm glad, I'm glad that I did make the time to do so yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:me too, because it's led to the conversation and that for me is you know part of watching the flow of flow. You know where it sort of takes us to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'll have to get hold of your journal and try that, because I've always liked writing, including journaling, and so, yeah, I'd like to experiment with that as well well, a little um, a little bit of sort of insight.
Speaker 1:Personal insight for me is that when the book was published, obviously I'd written the book and I used um journaling prompts that I have used in the past. I, you know, was very mindful about which ones to include. And then, when, when I got the book, uh, for the first time from the publisher, I chose to sit down and read it and really read it, fully engaged, and then I started using the journaling prompts and I found it was so, it was so beautiful, because it brought me into a deep place, even though it's something that cognitively, I'm already very aware of, and so I think that it was almost like a kind of reinforcement for me of, like, I mean, this practice. It really is, the name is right, it really is flow journaling. So, yeah, I'd love gosh, I mean I'd love to, I'd love to hear from you like how that is. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:I also just want to reflect really really quickly on what you just said about reading. So I, distinctly, as a child, sitting on a windowsill in my bedroom, I mean for hours and hours and hours reading, and my dad getting very cross about it because he couldn't see the value because I wasn't doing, and I can imagine also that, like doing as in, like valid, doing from his perspective, and whereas my mom saying, no, this is so, this is such a wonderful thing, she's lost in the story. You know what an amazing place to be and I and just listening to you there it was like gosh. Yeah, these two, these two ways of valuing this state of flow or not valuing this state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, yeah, and being is exactly right, like what you were sharing, about what your mum was saying. You know about your being and your learning to be engaged versus having to be doing something all the time. Yeah, engaged versus having to be doing something all the time. Yeah and yeah. So, yeah, we both seem to have enjoyed that experience of getting fully immersed in reading and and I think that's another thing that, like academic life, I ended up always reading nonfiction, which was was, you know, interesting and useful, but not engaging, and and it's like when I get back to reading fiction that I'm like, yeah, I can actually this, I can get immersed in and that it's okay.
Speaker 1:It's okay, yeah, lost in immersed. I mean lost, lost has got connotations, but immersed, yeah, in the story or in the task. It's a wonderful thing so yeah, yeah, yeah brilliant, brilliant. So, honestly, I have just absolutely loved this conversation and it's um likewise.
Speaker 2:I have too. They've lifted my day, the end of my day, but, um, that's been really enjoyable to obviously share across the world here. Um, you know a shared love for this experience and and like why it matters. So I appreciate the opportunity to share with your listeners about why I think it matters and I hope that you know they will also be interested to learn more themselves.
Speaker 2:And most of the time I find, whenever I'm talking about flow, like with what you're doing, and dropping away self-consciousness and not worrying about failure and success but just being totally process oriented, like people can connect with that, like the experience, and so what Mike has given us is a language around that and a way of understanding that, a framework for understanding that and how. In my book it's meant to be a practical book. It's meant to be about, well, what have I learned through working as a psychologist and also through my research. I'm not trying to like be overly critical of research it's really important but what I've learned about how we might be able to access it and my stories and other people's stories in the book as well.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Yeah Well, I hope, like you say, that it's opened up a window or a pathway for people to think oh, actually, it's okay to feel this feeling as well, because I think yeah it's not just okay, it matters, it really matters, it really matters and that validation of that feels really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. Yeah, well, thank you very much. It really matters and that validation of that feels really important. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, thank you very much. Been lovely to speak with you honey, yeah, really lovely.
Speaker 1:So there's a moment at the end of a recording with the guest where I pause and then we carry on chatting for a bit and then I think, oh, I so wish I'd recorded that because so much more richness um has, you know, unfolds and um, yeah, I really, I really loved that conversation with Sue. I think these are the, you know, my favorite kind of guest conversations when they're far-reaching and wide-ranging and personal as well, and I really hope that listening to her has sparked your own curiosity. And, you know, her book is very accessible and really clearly lays out these nine dimensions that she touched on, um, the nine dimensions that that mike um identified and um, and I just think that there's something really powerful about what she was saying that flow is an absolutely necessary state. Often we can disregard the importance of flow in favour of some of these old patterns of thinking, these old stories, old ways of thinking about what success looks like or what being goal-driven looks like, or what hard work looks like. Looks like or what hard work looks like, and actually inviting in this experience of flow may be something that really helps you or others that you know, shift some of those limiting thoughts, beliefs and maybe enables you to find your own way of accessing what really gives you, um, that space where time and effort cease to exist. So, um, and also, you know, of course, it may be that so much of what we've said has like really like resonated with you and you've gone. Oh, yeah, I get that. That's how I feel when I dot, dot, dot, fill in the gaps, um, so if that's the case, do come back to me, do let me know what, what you've noticed, um, about this experience of flow for yourself. I would love to hear, um, and yeah, is there anything else I want to say? Oh, just one last thing, which is, if you don't already get the emails about these podcast episodes, if you haven't yet signed up to my mailing list, then please do. The podcast now runs every fortnight and you may have listened to last the episode whenever it was. I don't know when this one's going live, so I'm not sure what the difference is, how many weeks it's been, but you might have listened to the episode where I shared about the reason for sending the podcast live every fortnight rather than every week, and it was a way of breaking some of my own unwritten rules every other week from the podcast I am now sharing a written reflection, and the emails come out on a Sunday and there's something there to spark maybe your own curiosity, your own reflections, your own observations, and I write them.
Speaker 1:I understand actually even more now from having spoken with Sue. I write them from a state of flow myself. It always feels really important that when I'm communicating with you, that I write deep down in my belly, in that place of compassionate wisdom, and you know, and hopefully that comes across in the words that I share. And as with everything I would always love, you know, I relish, I cherish your reflections, I love it when people write to me and I will always respond. So do join the the mailing list. If you'd like to receive that, just go on to the website hennyflynncouk, um and let me know um, and I'll also. There's a link in the um in the notes. I feel like I'm rambling now I I'm going to go, I've got distracted, I'm out of flow. Oh, sue, so much wisdom we have gathered from this conversation, so much knowledge. All right, my darlings, I send you a hug and a wave, thank you.