Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Non-Presence vs Flow States
Written by Fritz Nugent
My wife sits in the living room as I wash the dishes. She hears a crash and then, “shit”. I broke another plate. I break things frequently. We lose a lot of dishes each year. Mugs don’t last long. Wine glasses – forget it. Even the ones wrapped in a rubber skin don’t stand a chance. How is it that one person can cause so much destruction?
The Lack of Presence & its Subsequent Destruction
Like many other couples, the constant joke in our household when something breaks is, “that’s why we can’t have nice things!” And that is partially true. I don’t break expensive things, usually. The cheap stuff, sure. It’s often because I am not present. I’m not in the moment. While my body stands in the kitchen cleaning that dish, my brain is off thinking about what happened or what is yet to come. Sometimes I come up with creative ways to solve problems when I wash dishes. And broken kitchenware is an unpleasant side effect.
However, when I’m washing my favorite ceramic bowls and mugs that I created with my bare hands in college, I handle them with care. I feel their gravity and texture, see their beautiful color palate and sheen, and remember how I created that glaze. I think about what it felt like to form them. So I wash them intentionally. I only have a few left and want them to live for many more years. When I wash these items, I do so in a “flow” state. I am in the moment, with them.
What is a Flow State?
I’m sure you have heard of “flow” states. If not, a flow state is simply a present and fully immersed mental and physical state. When we are thinking about what is yet to come (the future), or what has already passed, we are most definitely not present. We cannot experience flow here. Have you ever got lost in the moment with a task that you enjoy, and looked up after 90 minutes had vanished? THAT is flow. That is living. That is mindfulness.
Creating Awareness Around Your Presence
I have a young and wise friend who jokes with his fiance about being a “spazz” versus “flowing”. He used to frequently break things, too. When he does, she gently reminds him to “flow”. They have been joking about this for so long that he can catch himself when he is teetering on the edge of spazzing out and can pull himself back into the moment. He finds flow.
Mindfulness During Exercise
So you ask how this relates to movement, training, competing? Good question. Many Invictus coaches believe that how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you’re a spazz in life, you’ll be a spazz in the gym. If you breathe poorly during the day and at night, there’s a good chance that you’ll breathe poorly during training and competitions. If you constantly allow yourself to get angry and negative during simple, low-pressure tasks in your life (like driving and cooking), you will also find negativity in training. And for those who have no mindfulness in their lives and don’t know if they are negative, positive, or something else entirely, there’s a high chance that in your training, you are also numb. That’s a topic for another day…
Spazz vs Flow
So back to spazz vs flow. My young friend is also one hell of an athlete. Since undertaking the mindset of flow, his performance has increased tremendously. He watches old training videos of himself and can see how far he has come.
Does Rich Froning look like a spazz when he’s hawking someone down at the end of the CrossFit Games? Not a chance. He’s flowing, until the very end when it’s time to fight. His mindset was not stumbled upon by accident. He was not born with it, and his mindset is not simply a natural response from successful training and competing. He is elite because of his mindset which supports his training, recovery, everything.
Implement Your Flow
You can invoke a flow state any time. Literally. When you are flossing your teeth, you can learn to enjoy the process, to be in that moment with your fingers, teeth, and the floss. Of course it’s easier to find flow within tasks we enjoy, and it would not be a waste of your time to learn to increase mindfulness during the “mundane”. Our lives are simply a series of repetitive tasks…until we learn to experience each moment as much more.
So add some flow to your life. Witness the spazz coming on, and turn it around. Maybe then you can have nice things.