Flow In Sports

Flow In Sports
by Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The keys to optimal experiences and performances.
Flow is the state of being totally involved in what you are doing, whether it is sport, art, or performance. We usually typify it as a time when time passes very quickly, when you're very clear about what you're doing and where your skills rise to match the challenges.
This book adds clear goals, action and awareness merging, unambiguous feedback from the task, and a loss of self consciousness to our simplistic criteria. It also says that flow is fun for its own sake.
Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a renowned American psychologist who has made this field his own for many decades. He would have been a bigger name had he had a shorter name, perhaps. It is pronounced "Me-high Chick-sent-me-high" (which may have some resonances for old hippies). Dr Susan Jackson is an Australian athlete, coach and academic who is regarded as a world leader in the study of flow in sports.
At a lecture in Sydney a couple of years ago, Prof Csikszentmihalyi warned that between 10 and 20% of people report never feeling flow. But if you have, then this book provides some clear suggestions on how to improve your performance.
Challenge leads to flow.
When Sue Jackson took up rock climbing, she had to manage her anxiety. A fall that she survived helped give some perspective on the danger, but she found that concentrating on the next appropriate challenge and focusing on it was the key. Structuring challenges so they're appropriate is also useful. And the book recommends that you turn off negative self talk.
Transcending normal awareness.
Flow could be described as a mystical process. For athletes, concentrating on their own bodies lets them forget themelves. For presenters, the equivalent may be concentrating on their audience and how it is responding. It is the focus on the process that is important. This book makes the points that you need to acept the environment as a given, and let your competitors worry about themselves.
Knowing where you're going.
Set clear, specific goals that you understand so well that they're automatic. Set realistic goals. For a beginning presenter this may be as simple as keeping the audience's attention.
Understanding feedback.
When you're in flow, feedback on your performance is immediate, clear and unambiguous. There is a danger in getting inappropriate feedback from others. Negative feedback is often far more powerful than positive feedback. Feedback should be task-oriented and positive, not outcome related or derogatory.
Focus on the present.
Actors call this 'being in the moment'. The book offers a number of suggestions about refocusing, making back up plans, and concentrating on the task at hand. It also suggests that meditation and concentration exercises may be useful.
Controlling the controllables.
Finding the right level of control is important. One figure skater describes it as 'riding on the razor'. Thorough preparation in what you can control is important. Recognizing all those factors is important. That's why presenters should always do many rehearsals, including a run through in the room they're presenting in. In any sport, or performance, there will always be things you can't control. That's what makes flow (and fun) possible.
Focus on fun.
The authors say "We play sport, we don't work sport." And actors are also called 'players', as in "the play's the thing". All perfomance should have elements of play. The book discriminates between intrinsic motivations (like enjoyment) and extrinsic motivations - the external outcomes. In our experience if you achieve the internal outcome of achieving flow as a presenter, then the audience will be impressed.
We highly recommend Flow in Sports, which is available through BodyandMindFlow

Permalink