The Dark Side of Flow (Don’t be a Bliss Junkie)
Let me repeat this because it’s SO important. Flow and fulfillment are not magical spells that make life easy. Life is difficult, but Flow and fulfillment make life feel easier. A sign that you have these qualities is that you are able to pursue your audacious goal with the knowledge that EVEN IF YOU FAIL, you’ll be grateful for journey that your goal took you on, AND you’ll simply make a different audacious goal. Success is not measured by your achievements, success is measured by how many times you fail and keep going. In other words, success is measured by how many obstacles you overcome. As Tom Bilyeu, from Impact Theory likes to say, the struggle is guaranteed, but the success is not. Make sure you have something worth struggling for.
That being said, Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler, the authors of “Stealing Fire” warn “don’t be a bliss junkie”. I’ll make the same warning here. A bliss junkie is somebody who, because they’ve tapped into a powerful Flow state, believes that they can simply “Flow” through life. It’s somebody who refuses to DO THE WORK unless they can do so effortlessly, or in Flow. You can be FULFILLED throughout life, but it simply isn’t possible to be in Flow 24/7 and constantly feel STER at their strongest levels. There will be down times and failures, but in those times it’s important that you reflect, learn and press forward. Don’t wait for things to become easy again, because they won’t unless you lower your standards. Things only become easy again once you raise your skill level enough to meet the occasion, remember, where skill level and challenge meet, is the Flow channel.
In the words of Ed Mylett, you are perfect for the environment/situation that you are currently in. You’ve done everything that you’ve needed to do in order to get here. If you want to achieve the Flow life, if you want to become perfect for the environment/situation that you WANT to be in. Then you need to raise your standards and fail forwards. Use everything that you’ve learned here. Don’t be the person that reads this course through its entirety and says “WHOA, YES!” and then doesn’t actually apply anything. Make a change. BE the change you wish to see in the world. Live the Flow life.
It is so important to continiously stress to learn and LIVE the flow life! This course was a great introduction to what flow is. The material was presented with a nice balance of simplifying the content to make it relatable and understandable without going to deep or of into another tangent.