“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The blog today is a bit more esoteric but bear with me on it. Our focus and mindset is crucial to how anything is perceived and how we feel empowered, or not, about making change happen. So many people feel despondent about their ability to feel able and empowered to change our consumer world to a sustainable world. But as I have paraphrased more than once – if not us, who, and if not now, when. Our consensus reality is what holds us back, and yet our minds are capable of achieving amazing things if we will only let them. An example of this that I will discuss today is that of Flow. We all do it, some more than others, but being in the idea that is ‘flow’ shows us clearly what we can do, and we can do it now.
When a person is hypnotized, they can recall details of many things that simply slipped by at the time they were being experienced. Your brain takes in an amazing amount of information every second, but it is then processed by your brain using the belief structures into what information will be attended to and what will be ignored. Your wants, desires, and especially your expectations are used by the brain to manufacture the actual reality that you personally come to experience – this is your own unique conditioning. When enough people seem to share a similar experience, they are agreeing unconsciously to use the same ‘filters’ (the belief structures) to process the information – this is a consensus reality. When you use metacognition to recognize the filters being used, you can consciously change which information is used and how you will now consciously interpret that information – becoming the observer of your experiences. Once you intentionally expand your consciousness you see a new reality – you change the filters. You also see the insanity of the filters being used by so many people who are still ‘asleep’ and processing unconsciously though the consensus reality. What you intend is where you put your energy. Intentionality comes from focus. And flow is all about focus – the secret to happiness.
Have you been so focused on a job, task, hobby, etc., that you forgot all about the time? Or, that the task or activity you were doing just seemed so easy and effortless and you could hardly believe it was going so well? Then you were in flow. Psychologist Dr. Mikaly Csikszentmihalyi (I’ll refer to him as Dr Chic) interviewed many people across a range of disciplines and activities in which a high-level state of concentration and engagement was needed to complete a task or activity that challenged one’s skills and abilities. Symptoms included a sense of complete absorption in the task or activity where time and personal needs actually became irrelevant. The interviewees also described that they were so engaged in what they were doing that not only did they have feelings of spontaneous waves of joy and satisfaction, but the task or activity was second nature to them – they were in flow. Athletes have often called this being in the zone where they cannot seem to make a mistake or their energy and technique seems perfect.
I find that one of the greatest barriers to creating the sustainability transition is the disempowering narrative of victimhood (being trapped in the consumer lifestyle with the mythical ‘they’ having all the control) linked to the perception that this kind of change will be an awful lot of work. Well, our ‘controllers’ (the mythical they) do have control but only because we the masses actually give them the control. And if we treat the work of change for a sustainable future as an odious task then it is no wonder so many people do not want to get involved. Instead preferring to complain about how bad things are getting and that there is no hope. Anxieties abound and people seem addicted to anxiety rather than really focusing on happiness and well-being.
Now Dr Chic made some brilliant observations about anxiety in our global culture. “To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.” Before I get in to more detail about flow in the next post, I’ll mention a little more about ‘intention’ – “definition: purpose, design, aim, end, object, objective, goal, mean what one intends to accomplish or attain.” Having a passion about an outcome you want requires that you have an intention to pursue that outcome. Hence a focus coupled with attention is a prerequisite for intention to create a sustainable future.
“Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we use this energy. Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how use it. And it is an energy under control, to do with as we please; hence attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Imagine being involved in a task with a focused outcome in which the work itself to that aim is so enjoyable, the process itself is no longer the problem. That is, the daunting work itself is irrelevant, because the task itself is fun and becomes full of optimism and hope. Once the process becomes fun, the helplessness of fearing the lack of a desirable outcome is no longer a barrier to change. If ‘flow’ is that good, why aren’t we already doing it? Well, I need to explain it more and then get you to see just how you can apply it to your current life and situation. The old reason, I can’t do it because……. (insert your reason) falls away because it doesn’t matter if you are rich and powerful or poor and feel inconsequential. The situation doesn’t matter, only the attitude to the task in front of you. Attitudes are merely the consequence of your belief structures. Change the attitudes and you begin to change the limiting beliefs for empowering beliefs. Once you start to be in flow with your thinking you begin to feel invincible, and that my friends is the path to changing world to one you want to see.
TBC …………..
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