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86. Why Flow Based Living is the Key to Effortless Success · The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast

• 0:01
  Kathie Owen: Flow state also known as being in the zone is the mental state in which perform a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and enjoyment in the process of the activity.
• 0:16
  Kathie Owen: The flow experience can be related to the comfort zone.
• 0:19
  Kathie Owen: Uh, along with peak performance, a state of flow is focused on the present moment.
• 0:27
  Kathie Owen: Let's identify elements of flow and brain waves associated with the flow state and even discover exercises to help you get into the flow state more often.
• 0:40
  Kathie Owen: You're listening to the stop, the mind screw podcast.
• 0:43
  Kathie Owen: I'm your host, Kathie Owen.
• 0:45
  Kathie Owen: I have been a certified fitness trainer and certified life coach since 2002.
• 0:51
  Kathie Owen: On this channel, we talk about having a growth mindset, healthy habits.
• 0:56
  Kathie Owen: Fitness entrepreneurship, and even some Reality Transurfing.
• 1:01
  Kathie Owen: Today we are talking about flow state and how to experience it more often.
• 1:10
  Kathie Owen: So flow state comes from intrinsic motivation or internal motivation.
• 1:15
  Kathie Owen: It is very common in professional athletes.
• 1:18
  Kathie Owen: A lot of my content goes hand in hand with sports psychology and entrepreneurship.
• 1:24
  Kathie Owen: So when I talk about flow, I'm talking about being in the zone where you see the athlete, his actions and awareness become one, and he just performs it eloquently.
• 1:36
  Kathie Owen: It has to do with habits.
• 1:38
  Kathie Owen: It has to do with growth mindset and it has to do also with Reality Transurfing.
• 1:43
  Kathie Owen: So all the things I talk about here on this channel and one of the elements I really like about flow is make it a priority.
• 1:52
  Kathie Owen: When you make it a priority, you will start to see your life change in infinite ways.
• 1:58
  Kathie Owen: And we're going to talk about that today.
• 2:01
  Kathie Owen: So there are brainwaves that are associated with flow state.
• 2:05
  Kathie Owen: What are they?
• 2:06
  Kathie Owen: And ideally to understand the flow state, we need to identify the brainwaves we have as humans.
• 2:12
  Kathie Owen: Right now, they have five brainwave states that are identified.
• 2:17
  Kathie Owen: Number one is your gamma brainwaves, and this is the.
• 2:20
  Kathie Owen: Brainwaves that is associated with the state of heightened perception, learning and problem solving tasks.
• 2:29
  Kathie Owen: We have beta brainwaves and the associated state is alert, normal and alert consciousness and active thinking.
• 2:37
  Kathie Owen: The next brainwave state we have is your alpha brainwaves.
• 2:41
  Kathie Owen: And this is associated.
• 2:43
  Kathie Owen: State is a calm yet alert brain state.
• 2:48
  Kathie Owen: And these are the flow state brainwaves being here in the present.
• 2:55
  Kathie Owen: And the, now this is where one has true flow experiences.
• 3:00
  Kathie Owen: Brain activity has proven that this is flow state.
• 3:04
  Kathie Owen: It is helpful to identify when your brain is working in this state.
• 3:08
  Kathie Owen: And then we have theta brainwaves.
• 3:11
  Kathie Owen: And they provide the gateway to subconscious learning and intuition.
• 3:15
  Kathie Owen: Theta brainwaves take place when our senses are withdrawn from the external 3d world and focused inward.
• 3:23
  Kathie Owen: This is state akin to sleep or hypnotic or deeply relaxed state.
• 3:28
  Kathie Owen: You are not unconscious, but can still control the direction of your thoughts.
• 3:33
  Kathie Owen: This state is a great place to start identifying limiting beliefs and even rewriting those limiting beliefs.
• 3:40
  Kathie Owen: Using the pruning shears of revision as taught by Neville Goddard.
• 3:44
  Kathie Owen: I will have a link in the show notes and description to that lecture of the pruning shears of revision by Neville Goddard, as well as we will also be talking about this often in the near future.
• 3:57
  Kathie Owen: And then the last brainwave state that we are known of right now is called the Delta brainwaves.
• 4:04
  Kathie Owen: And this is associated.
• 4:06
  Kathie Owen: With a state of sleep and dreaming.
• 4:09
  Kathie Owen: And if you would like more information about the brainwaves, I did an episode on brainwaves and I'll have a link to it in the show notes and the description.
• 4:17
  Kathie Owen: I also have a mind map that goes with this episode.
• 4:21
  Kathie Owen: And I like teaching from a mind map because you can build off of this mind map and I invite you to go download it and then take notes of what you notice this flow.
• 4:32
  Kathie Owen: Because when you start to notice flow, you'll be able to get into it easier and easily, make it a priority in your life.
• 4:41
  Kathie Owen: You can download that mind map at kathieowen.com/mindmap.
• 4:47
  Kathie Owen: There'll be a link to that in the show notes and the description as well.
• 4:52
  Kathie Owen: So there are several elements of flow.
• 4:54
  Kathie Owen: And we want to recognize these in our everyday life.
• 4:57
  Kathie Owen: There are many different ways to enter these elements of flow.
• 5:01
  Kathie Owen: And we must consider having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset in order to have the experience of flow.
• 5:09
  Kathie Owen: Let's discuss this.
• 5:10
  Kathie Owen: Number one, we have clear goals at an abstract and granular level.
• 5:16
  Kathie Owen: So we, we all have goals.
• 5:17
  Kathie Owen: We want to reach, but when you have them at an abstract level, so you have a big goal you want to achieve, and then you break that down into little bitty to where you're getting down to the nitty gritty, granular level of even hourly and minute.
• 5:34
  Kathie Owen: And by the minute what you're going to do to achieve that goal.
• 5:39
  Kathie Owen: And a mind map is also a great way to build off of a goal at a big giant level, and then build it down to the granular level.
• 5:51
  Kathie Owen: And I did a video and a podcast episode on.
• 5:56
  Kathie Owen: Finding goals are setting goals.
• 5:58
  Kathie Owen: I talk about this often as a certified fitness trainer, but by finding direction, in relation to the meaningful goal, the mind is rearranged and recalibrated with purpose.
• 6:11
  Kathie Owen: What do I mean by this?
• 6:12
  Kathie Owen: You set a definite chief aim or great big goal, and you break it down to the granular level.
• 6:18
  Kathie Owen: When you do this, you start to see synchronicities everywhere.
• 6:22
  Kathie Owen: And you also notice that everything is.
• 6:25
  Kathie Owen: Contributing to that great big goal.
• 6:29
  Kathie Owen: Once we identify our purpose, we can always come back to this element, especially when we encounter reactivity of the situation.
• 6:37
  Kathie Owen: So for example, you get an argument with a coworker.
• 6:41
  Kathie Owen: You could break that down and check that reactivity and go, oh, I see how this is related to my definite chief aim.
• 6:50
  Kathie Owen: And so what happens to us when we set that big goal is we start to get complacent and we lead to stagnation and that can lead to a drifting mind.
• 7:01
  Kathie Owen: What do I mean by that?
• 7:03
  Kathie Owen: The drifting mind is eloquently described in the book, outwitting, the devil, which outwitting the devil.
• 7:09
  Kathie Owen: I'm going to do more episodes on that, but that is one of my top three books.
• 7:14
  Kathie Owen: You've got A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.
• 7:16
  Kathie Owen: You've got Reality Transurfing.
• 7:18
  Kathie Owen: And then comes.
• 7:19
  Kathie Owen: Comes Outwitting the Devil.
• 7:21
  Kathie Owen: And Outwitting the Devil is a book by Napoleon hill and he talks about drifting how our minds tend to drift.
• 7:28
  Kathie Owen: And he uses that against us or the devil.
• 7:32
  Kathie Owen: Or the demons that we have to battle, they use us against us so that we drift from our goal is just human nature.
• 7:41
  Kathie Owen: And it takes discipline and life experience to prove to yourself that you can stop drifting and focus on reaching those long-term goals.
• 7:50
  Kathie Owen: Set goals with qualitative and quantitative key performance indicators.
• 7:56
  Kathie Owen: And we'll discuss these in just a minute.
• 7:58
  Kathie Owen: So you want to purify the mind and the intent.
• 8:01
  Kathie Owen: And we talked about this last week when we talked about new year's resolutions, I'll have a link to that in the show notes and description as well.
• 8:08
  Kathie Owen: To purify the mind.
• 8:10
  Kathie Owen: One must become aware of limiting beliefs and reprogram those limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs.
• 8:18
  Kathie Owen: To purify One's intent one one must become congruent with the heart and the mind, our heart and mind coordination.
• 8:27
  Kathie Owen: And we also want to purify our intent by aligning our personal intent with our outer intent.
• 8:33
  Kathie Owen: Outer intent comes from the book Reality Transurfing and it's our higher being God, the universe, whatever you want to call that.
• 8:42
  Kathie Owen: But that is that intention that we want to strive to get the heart and the mind.
• 8:50
  Kathie Owen: Aligned.
• 8:51
  Kathie Owen: And the perfection of one's motive inspires human action.
• 8:55
  Kathie Owen: An act is more or less pure depending on the degree of selfless love of God.
• 9:01
  Kathie Owen: The universe.
• 9:02
  Kathie Owen: Infinite intelligence with which it is performed.
• 9:06
  Kathie Owen: So there another element of flow is you have immediate feedback and reporting.
• 9:10
  Kathie Owen: While in flow state one gets immediate feedback and reporting of key performance indicators or KPIs.
• 9:17
  Kathie Owen: The feedback loop is a powerful one, too.
• 9:21
  Kathie Owen: We have both qualitative and quantitative indicators.
• 9:26
  Kathie Owen: So quantitative indicators are the most straightforward KPIs.
• 9:30
  Kathie Owen: And short, they are measured solely by a number.
• 9:33
  Kathie Owen: But qualitative indicators are not measured by numbers.
• 9:36
  Kathie Owen: And typically qualitative indicators or qualitative KPIs is a characteristic of a process like flow or a business decision.
• 9:47
  Kathie Owen: Another element of flow is there's harmony between challenge and skill.
• 9:51
  Kathie Owen: And we've all encountered a time when something is challenging for us.
• 9:55
  Kathie Owen: But while in flow, one has a connection between the challenge and the skill.
• 10:00
  Kathie Owen: We know when we are in the flow state, because our emotional state is balanced.
• 10:05
  Kathie Owen: Oftentimes we can work with a challenge and many times until we reach a skill level that equals the harmony between challenge and skill.
• 10:16
  Kathie Owen: The good news is it is possible.
• 10:18
  Kathie Owen: I'm here to tell you, and it is helpful to challenge oneself to further cultivate or perfect the skills.
• 10:26
  Kathie Owen: A mind engaged in the voluntary challenge of accomplishing something worthwhile.
• 10:31
  Kathie Owen: This is the ideal state and creates a flow personality.
• 10:36
  Kathie Owen: This is where.
• 10:38
  Kathie Owen: Your heart and mind get coordinated.
• 10:40
  Kathie Owen: And you're also motivated intrinsically or inside.
• 10:44
  Kathie Owen: Something is motivating you from your heart.
• 10:47
  Kathie Owen: Basically.
• 10:48
  Kathie Owen: Action and awareness become one is another element of flow.
• 10:53
  Kathie Owen: Attention is absorbed by the activity we become so involved in what we are doing, that the activity becomes intuitive.
• 11:00
  Kathie Owen: And one with the goal.
• 11:02
  Kathie Owen: We become capable of handling large complex amounts of data.
• 11:07
  Kathie Owen: We make rapid correct decisions.
• 11:10
  Kathie Owen: We see, see the connections, the relationships, and the nuanced distinctions.
• 11:15
  Kathie Owen: I like to say synchronicities are everywhere when we are out of flow.
• 11:19
  Kathie Owen: State are out of harmony.
• 11:21
  Kathie Owen: We miss those synchronicities.
• 11:24
  Kathie Owen: Another element of flow is distractions are excluded from consciousness, fear, doubt, and indecision taper away.
• 11:32
  Kathie Owen: I can personally testify to this.
• 11:36
  Kathie Owen: We leave no room in the mind for irrelevant information as we become one with what we are involved with.
• 11:44
  Kathie Owen: I see this happens so often it's even happened within myself.
• 11:48
  Kathie Owen: The shiny object syndrome, and it's so easy to happen in today's world, especially with social media.
• 11:54
  Kathie Owen: But when we leave no room for distractions, they get excluded from our consciousness.
• 12:01
  Kathie Owen: When we are in flow, we become one with what we are involved with.
• 12:05
  Kathie Owen: We're not easily distracted.
• 12:07
  Kathie Owen: To go chase that next shiny object.
• 12:11
  Kathie Owen: Our personality becomes what is called autotelic and we're going to talk to them more detail about the term autotelic just a minute.
• 12:17
  Kathie Owen: But the term autotelic derives from two Greek words.
• 12:21
  Kathie Owen: Auto meaning self and telos meaning goal.
• 12:24
  Kathie Owen: It refers to a self-contained activity.
• 12:27
  Kathie Owen: One that is done, not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.
• 12:36
  Kathie Owen: A stronger sense of true self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
• 12:45
  Kathie Owen: Another element of flow is time is distorted time.
• 12:49
  Kathie Owen: No longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does.
• 12:52
  Kathie Owen: Hours seem to pass by in minutes in general.
• 12:55
  Kathie Owen: Most people report that time seems to pass by much faster, but occasionally time appears to slow down.
• 13:03
  Kathie Owen: Another element of flow.
• 13:05
  Kathie Owen: The activity and the person become autotelic.
• 13:09
  Kathie Owen: here is a quote from the book Flow by Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi, and it says,"an autotelic person needs few material, possessions and little entertainment.
• 13:19
  Kathie Owen: Comfort power or fame, because so much of what he or she is doing is already rewarding.
• 13:26
  Kathie Owen: I'm going to restate that because it's kind of important.
• 13:30
  Kathie Owen: "An autotelic person needs few material possessions." they need few material possessions.
• 13:36
  Kathie Owen: It's like the more you get rid of clutter and clean everything up around you, you don't need all that stuff.
• 13:44
  Kathie Owen: And when you are, autotelic you realize that you don't need the material possessions, you need very little entertainment.
• 13:51
  Kathie Owen: You need very little comfort, power fame, because so much of what the person is doing is already rewarding.
• 14:01
  Kathie Owen: "Because such persons experience flow and work and family life when actor interacting with people when eating, and even when alone with nothing to do.
• 14:10
  Kathie Owen: They are less dependent on the external rewards that keep others.
• 14:14
  Kathie Owen: Motivated to go on with a life composed of routines.
• 14:18
  Kathie Owen: A person in flow is more autonomous and independent because they cannot be easily manipulated by threats or rewards from the outside.
• 14:27
  Kathie Owen: At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life." That is from the book Flow by Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi.
• 14:37
  Kathie Owen: Hi, I'll have a link to it in the show notes and the description as well as a link to the blog post.
• 14:42
  Kathie Owen: That includes all of this good stuff.
• 14:46
  Kathie Owen: In the blog post.
• 14:49
  Kathie Owen: So the activity and the person becomes autotelic experience is that it is an end in itself.
• 14:57
  Kathie Owen: The activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding.
• 15:02
  Kathie Owen: Autotelic personality seem to enjoy situations that others would find an enjoyable.
• 15:08
  Kathie Owen: Enormous patience and persistence of a positive attitude.
• 15:12
  Kathie Owen: And the face of prolonged adversity is experienced.
• 15:16
  Kathie Owen: I can also testify to that.
• 15:19
  Kathie Owen: I wrote about this in my book, uh, The Truth Bubbles Up, I wrote about my experience with this, where I had enormous amount of patience and persistence, and it, I kept a positive attitude and how that helped me through a prolonged adversity.
• 15:36
  Kathie Owen: And.
• 15:37
  Kathie Owen: I can absolutely testify to this.
• 15:39
  Kathie Owen: And if you read my book, you will understand exactly what I mean.
• 15:43
  Kathie Owen: I'll have a link in the show notes and description below to my book.
• 15:48
  Kathie Owen: Another element of flow is you have unwavering light-hearted focus.
• 15:53
  Kathie Owen: So.
• 15:54
  Kathie Owen: This year or recent, I set my new year's resolutions back at the end of the year.
• 16:00
  Kathie Owen: And I start working on them back in November.
• 16:03
  Kathie Owen: Sometimes even as early as October.
• 16:06
  Kathie Owen: 'cause I like to get ahead of myself when January does come around and I'm already in a zone.
• 16:13
  Kathie Owen: So I set a priority of making flow a priority.
• 16:17
  Kathie Owen: That was one of my main goals.
• 16:20
  Kathie Owen: And when I started doing that, I started noticing that I had an unwavering lighthearted focus.
• 16:26
  Kathie Owen: For example, if, if, if I'm running late to an appointment or something like that, I always remind myself I'm running on God's time, because sometimes we can't help it.
• 16:36
  Kathie Owen: If we're running late for an appointment, of course, we have to keep the integrity of keeping that appointment or letting the person know or the job know that we're going to be late, but.
• 16:46
  Kathie Owen: I keep it lighthearted.
• 16:48
  Kathie Owen: And by doing that, I keep my focus as well.
• 16:53
  Kathie Owen: This is also a quote from the book Flow by Mihaly Csksentmihalyi.
• 16:58
  Kathie Owen: And when he talks about unwavering lighthearted focus,"enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement by a sense of novelty and accomplishment.
• 17:08
  Kathie Owen: Playing a close game of tennis that stretches one's ability is enjoyable as is reading a book that reveals things in a new light.
• 17:16
  Kathie Owen: As is having a conversation that leads us to express ideas.
• 17:20
  Kathie Owen: We didn't know we had.
• 17:22
  Kathie Owen: Closing a contested business deal or any piece of work well done is enjoyable.
• 17:28
  Kathie Owen: None of these experiences may be particularly pleasurable at the time they are taking place, but after wired, we think back on them and say, that was really fun.
• 17:38
  Kathie Owen: And wish they would happen again.
• 17:41
  Kathie Owen: After an enjoyable event, we know that we have changed.
• 17:44
  Kathie Owen: That our self has grown in some respect and we have become more complex as a result of it.
• 17:50
  Kathie Owen: So I'm the corporate wellness director at OCuSOFT or now known as Southwest research and technology center campus.
• 17:58
  Kathie Owen: And OCuSOFT part of that campus.
• 18:00
  Kathie Owen: I run a gym called the ozone.
• 18:03
  Kathie Owen: That we have, I've been there for 10 years.
• 18:05
  Kathie Owen: And during the pandemic, of course, we closed the gym down.
• 18:09
  Kathie Owen: And if you've read any of my content or listen to me, talk about it before.
• 18:13
  Kathie Owen: I did whatever I needed to be done to keep my two.
• 18:18
  Kathie Owen: Just stay at the job because I love the company that I worked for.
• 18:22
  Kathie Owen: I love what it stands for.
• 18:23
  Kathie Owen: Was it enjoyable?
• 18:25
  Kathie Owen: Absolutely not.
• 18:26
  Kathie Owen: It was not ideal, but I made it enjoyable and experiences I had during that time were.
• 18:34
  Kathie Owen: Undoubtedly benefiting to my life in general.
• 18:39
  Kathie Owen: And so I got back into the gym full time in July of 2022.
• 18:45
  Kathie Owen: And when I got back in the gym, I noticed a lot of things were not right.
• 18:49
  Kathie Owen: Like the funkshway in the gym was very disorganized and I'll have pictures of this as well.
• 18:55
  Kathie Owen: So you can kind of see where I went through.
• 18:58
  Kathie Owen: I'll have it in the blog post that's going to be linked with this episode But What i did was i came up with a vision and i wanted to remodel the gym i want it to be more functional fitness because as a personal trainer i knew that that's what this corporation needed as a corporate wellness director we all need functional fitness.
• 19:23
  Kathie Owen: There's No ifs ands or buts about it.
• 19:26
  Kathie Owen: Functional fitness just means you are improving your fitness to improve your everyday life Uh, As as i'm walking as pushing pulling lifting Standing sitting Getting hip flexibility So many different things.
• 19:42
  Kathie Owen: So i had a vision and i worked with this guy named zach at advanced fitness.
• 19:47
  Kathie Owen: He designs gyms and i said here's what i want here's what i i envisioned And he helped me design the gym then i made a presentation that i did to the executive team.
• 19:58
  Kathie Owen: And the executive team made the decision that yes we want to go with this.And I'm telling you the simple little steps that it took and how this all happened but this process started back in july It got improved in our approved in october That's how long it had to work on this And then i just got it finished we're going to be back in the gym the second week of january And the gym will be open But i hit many hiccups along the way and and and none of those experiences were particularly pleasurable at the time.
• 20:35
  But afterward I can look back and say that was very rewarding.
• 20:41
  And the whole thing is very rewarding.
• 20:44
  As I left my office last night, I was like, Ah, It just brought tears to my eyes because I felt like.
• 20:54
  That.
• 20:56
  Was it.
• 20:57
  That was it.
• 20:59
  So.
• 21:00
  Some elements also a flow is you're able to hold two polarizing thoughts in your mind.
• 21:07
  And I can go back to something that I learned in Toastmasters.
• 21:12
  I, one of my really good friends gave an awesome speech where she.
• 21:16
  A time when she realized the journey and the destination more one, and those are two polarizing thoughts.
• 21:23
  You've got your journey and then you have your destination.
• 21:27
  But a spoiler alert the journey and the destination are one, at least that's the way I believe.
• 21:34
  And this belief serves me.
• 21:37
  When we don't identify with the destination, but see the journey and the destination is one, we can hold two polarizing thoughts at the same time.
• 21:47
  But often the question is asked, what's more important, the journey or the destination.
• 21:53
  But they both have their benefits.
• 21:55
  And I really believe the journey and the destination are one, and this is a great state of mind and a huge part of the flow state.
• 22:04
  It is the psychology of optimal experience.
• 22:09
  So you're able to hold two polarizing thoughts in your mind.
• 22:13
  Here's some exercise flow reflections that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode.
• 22:18
  Number one, you identify and note any flow breakers and use these to help you identify limiting beliefs and even identify flow breakers.
• 22:29
  Number two, reflect upon the beliefs around these flow breakers.
• 22:34
  Once you identify limiting beliefs, you can reflect on them to see why your flow state was broken.
• 22:41
  And this can be very beneficial and won't even take much effort.
• 22:45
  You can start what I call a flow journal.
• 22:48
  I use notion for this.
• 22:50
  I really liked that.
• 22:51
  But it can help you see the things in a new way and find your very own sweet spot.
• 22:57
  And number three, you can change them.
• 23:00
  You can either change how you relate to them, accept them as they are.
• 23:05
  You can actually change it.
• 23:07
  Or you can do what is called D O D E do.
• 23:13
  Optimize delegate or eliminate.
• 23:17
  That means you either do it or you optimize it and make it easier or you delegate it to somebody else.
• 23:24
  or you eliminate it.
• 23:27
  In conclusion, this is the very thing I coach I use positive psychology tools and refer to these methods often in my flow coaching program.
• 23:37
  If you want to see your confidence levels improve, I highly recommend recommend everything mentioned in today's episode.
• 23:46
  You now have action steps that you can start today.
• 23:49
  It will make a big impact in a great way in all areas of your life.
• 23:54
  You'll find yourself living to your potential and nothing is better than having a life worth living.
• 24:00
  And the very step is trying to do new things and finding your full potential.
• 24:06
  Thank you for spending part of your day with me, I trust that you found this very beneficial and if you know someone who can benefit from this, please share it with them.
• 24:15
  And until next time, I'll see you next time.
• 24:19
  Peace out and Namaste.