An aptitude is a natural gift for doing something. It’s an intuitive understanding of how it works and how to use it. Finding and developing our strengths is part of becoming who we really are. Sir Ken Robinson says, “We don’t know who we can be until we know what we can do.”
An important note is that just because we have an aptitude for something does not mean we have a passion for it. My middle son has an incredible head for math, but he does not enjoy doing it. Being in our element means taking a deep pleasure in what we do.
Attitude is our personal perspective on our circumstances and ourselves. Our basic character, our sense of self-worth, the perceptions and expectations of those around us, all influence our attitude. Our perception of our circumstances depends largely on what we expect of ourselves.
If we do not encounter the right opportunities we may never know our aptitudes. It’s hard to know you are an excellent surfer if you live in the middle of a desert. A lot depends on the opportunities we have, the ones we create and if we take advantage of them.
Often finding people with similar passions leads us to our element. We have to explore different opportunities to find like-minded people. Other people often point out our skills or aptitudes too, as we do theirs.
HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN WE ARE IN OUR ELEMENT?
First of all, it is possible to come to our element in a myriad of ways. Some people find it through intense physical activity, taking risks, competition, or a sense of danger. For others, including many introverts, the element may come through more passive activities such as gardening, meditation, intense contemplation, painting, or writing.
One of the strongest signs of being in our element is a sense of doing what we are meant to do. There is a freedom and a feeling of authenticity. Ideas flow through us. Time feels different in our element, or as some people (including athletes) call it, the zone. Time moves quickly and fluidly when we are doing what we are good at and love.
THE ELEMENT AND FLOW
Some of you may be thinking the element sounds a lot like psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (phonetically chicks-sent-me-HIGH-ee) concept of flow. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as joy, creativity, and the process of total involvement with life. The components of flow create an optimal experience. The components include: facing a challenge that requires a skill we possess; complete absorption in an activity; clear goals and feedback; deep concentration that allows us to forget everything else; the loss of self-consciousness; and the sense that time transforms. The key component in flow is that it is an end in itself. The activity consumes us and becomes intrinsically rewarding.
Both being in our element and being in flow give us energy. The experience does not drain us, even if it is physically or mentally taxing. This kind of energy can be a big boost to an introvert’s well-being. Instead of overstimulating us, it recharges us, often in a productive and rewarding way.
FLOW STATES MAKE LIFE WORTH LIVING
I’ve had a fascination with the delicious, dreamy, creative flow state since I was a child. I believe the steady presence of flow experiences in my life is the reason for my overall contentedness and satisfaction. Jamie Wheal of The Flow Genome Project says flow is the source code for intrinsic motivation. In my opinion, intrinsic motivation and curiosity keep life engaging and interesting and therefore fulfilling.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, mentioned earlier, is known as the father of flow theory. Noting that levels of happiness did not increase with increased personal income, he set out to find out what does bring happiness and satisfaction. Interviewing creative individuals such as scientists and artists, he found many of them frequently experienced feelings of losing themselves, timelessness, effortlessness, and ecstasy. During those periods they felt they were outside of everyday experiences. Time and movement felt fluid. Certain activities brought about a sense of flow.
“Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describing “flow”
DO INTROVERTS EXPERIENCE FLOW DIFFERENTLY DUE TO STIMULATION SENSITIVITY?
Flow states, like Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences, do not happen continuously. Behind the flow feeling is a cascade of brain chemicals produced by the right mix of challenge and skill in our activities. There is a cycle to flow which requires us to go through different phases such as struggle and recovery. We all have different triggers that prompt us to enter the flow cycle.
As a sensitive introvert, my go-to triggers for flow are mental. I get the feeling of timelessness and spontaneous creativity via deep thinking and solitary, soothing, and reflective pursuits. Low stimulation is important. Others may access flow in more adrenaline-fueled, highly stimulating activities, but times of stillness and repetitive activity allow my mind to wander in a creatively productive and fulfilling way. Reading, writing, meditation, and meaningful conversations often set my nervous system at ease and allow flow to enter. This state of mind is addictive and has me seeking quiet time to get the restorative feeling again.
WHAT IS THE ENEMY OF MY FLOW STATE?
Interruptions and distractions are the enemy of flow state. As a young woman in my twenties, I worked as an office manager for a small IT recruiting firm in Chicago. I used to love to do repetitive data entry / accounting work. It allowed my mind to meander through meaningful memories or dally through dinner plans. When my boss entered the office each day, bursting through the door, taking huge strides down the center aisle, delegating work as she walked, my mindless work and yummy reflective trance were disrupted like a rock thrown into a tranquil pond.
Now as a fortysomething trying to work from home, the potential for interruptions is the same. My phone, my children, and my own distracted mind pull me away from the contemplative scene necessary for full creative productivity. Writing is the perfect blend of challenge and skill for me. If left alone in stillness, I can create sentences I’m proud of. I can slip into the beautiful place where my inner critic is silent and ideas flow.
FLOW NOT LIMITED TO SOLITARY MENTAL PURSUITS
Achieving the flow state is not limited to solitary pursuits for me, although they are the most reliable triggers. I also find myself in an otherworldly state while working with my coaching clients, talking with close friends/family or while making love. Again, there is a prerequisite of calm necessary to bring on the flow feeling. Intuitively guiding my clients and fostering their potential is hugely satisfying. It’s just the right blend of challenge and skill to put me in the zone. Conversing with my friends and family about intimate, expansive topics like personal growth and relationships brings on the good, fulfilling state of fluidity too.
Not only is flow achievable through social versus solitary endeavors, it can also be induced by physical triggers versus mental ones. In the past, dancing was the only physical activity that brought about the flow feeling. Music is a key reason for that. Music taps into rich brain chemicals for me.
Now, I occasionally have epiphanies, heightened creativity, and moments of effortlessness while running. This is what many call a “runner’s high” or “being in the zone.”
I also find intensely focusing on the physical sensations and emotional connection during sex opens up the door to the dreamlike, oxytocin and dopamine-laden experience of flow.
In both running and making love I am sufficiently challenged, engaged, and motivated, which makes them fulfilling, life-enriching endeavors. Which makes me want to do them again.
When I took the Flow Fundamentals Course through The Flow Genome Project, I learned one of the key steps to reaching flow state is securing our physical health. Our mind, body, and spirit are not able to reach optimal performance if they are deficient in quality sleep, food or fitness. We all know how distrac
ting and delaying a minor bout of sickness can be. A cold or the flu can narrow our focus to getting well. One bad night of sleep can affect us for days. If we want to live offensively versus defensively, we have to be in tip-top condition.
EXERCISE
Exercise is one of the most straightforward and effective ways to change our overall well-being. Moving and challenging our body produces and reduces the same neurochemicals that most antidepressants target.
Changing our body and mindset from sedentary to active requires making a decision, taking a step (however small) toward fitness and sticking with it. Our old friend, decision-making, again is the kick-starter to an upward spiral. If you’ll recall, making a decision (a good-enough decision), starts a cascade of positive activity in the brain. This activity helps us organize our actions, pull away from negative routines, and ultimately calm our nervous system.
I know how easy it is to embrace inertia. The couch, the television, our beds, the to-do list, our friends, and family all vie for our attention and time. It’s so easy to put exercise off, but again, fitness and the next topic, sleep, are the two most straightforward and powerful paths to feeling incredible. If we make improvements in these two areas alone, a positive shift will occur that affects every other area of our lives.
As I mentioned earlier, self-awareness and self-care are closely related. Before I took the leap and signed up for guitar lessons, I made a decision to invest in my physical health. My then husband and I joined the local health club. It was a beautiful modern facility with childcare for the kids. I needed a focus other than our children. Subconsciously, perhaps I was striving to figure out what I was made of. What could I handle physically and mentally?
My husband and I had always been health-conscious. We knew intellectually that taking care of our bodies was important but this time we dove deeper and made it more personal. We each signed up to work one-on-one with trainers. I know not everyone is able to afford a personal trainer. It is truly a luxury. For me, it was one of the best decisions I ever made and well worth the money. It forced accountability and commitment. My trainer challenged the hell out of me and I needed that. The original intention was to work with him for a month, learn what exercises to do, and then work independently. I ended up training with Michael for three years. We did not work together one-on-one the whole time. The last two years were in a group setting, which was more cost-effective.
The biggest bonus from the intense fitness training I did with Michael was an uptick in my self-confidence. Not just because I looked better, but because I felt better and I accomplished my fitness goals. I worked through the arduous process of improving my fitness and succeeded. I proved to myself I could stick with something difficult and reap the results.
One of my proudest and most satisfying moments was when I was talking with Michael one day about my sister. He asked if she was an athlete like me. My sister was definitely an athlete. She’d played volleyball, basketball and softball all through high school and into college. The magical point to his comment was that he thought I was an athlete too. No one had ever called me an athlete. This man in peak physical condition with a master’s degree in physiology thought I was athletic. I think I stood a couple inches taller after that session.
As beneficial as personal training was for me, it is absolutely not necessary for physical health. We can find yoga classes on YouTube, play ball with our kids in the driveway or take the dog for a walk. The crucial thing is to move our bodies consistently. Have compassion for ourselves when we mess up and do not hit the gym or make time for exercise. Do not give up! Do not berate yourself! Start again the next day. The amount of tries we get to do fitness right is limitless.
According to the neuroscientist Dr. Korb, exercise is like steroids for our brains. It causes an increase in nerve growth factors, which make our brain stronger and more resilient. One interesting fact is that voluntarily choosing to exercise creates more neuron development than being forced to, although both stimulate neuron growth.
Studies also show that exercise increases serotonin activity. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter found primarily in our intestines but also in our brains that helps with motivation and mood elevation. It has many purposes such as bowel function and letting us know when our appetite is sated, but for our discussion we will focus on the mood-elevating properties. Body movement increases the firing rate of serotonin neurons, which causes them to release more serotonin. We do not have to do formal exercise to get the serotonin to flow. Yard work, house cleaning, or walking around a mall all stimulate serotonin production. Serotonin gives us a feeling of calm and helps us achieve more restorative sleep.
Along with serotonin, endorphins, dopamine, and norepinephrine all increase with exercise. Endorphins are what give us that “runner’s high.” They decrease pain and anxiety. Dopamine affects pleasure, focus, and decision-making. Norepinephrine helps us concentrate. It, like serotonin, is one of the chemicals mimicked in antidepressants. Another big benefit of exercise is that it reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
Fitness and an active lifestyle provide the natural drugs we need to keep our mood lifted. I am sure you have all heard this before. I know the feeling of not wanting to be active. I want you to know the exhilarating feeling of completing your workout. Dopamine is released when we finish. Just planning to work out shifts our thinking from our lazy habit-entrenched neural pathways to the prefrontal “take charge” region of our brain.
Lastly, exercise promotes nourishing sleep. If we exercise during the day we will experience increased slow-wave sleep (more restorative) and reduced REM sleep (an active stage of sleep) at night. More about this in the next section.
Starting a new workout routine feels draining at first, but eventually we notice more energy and vitality throughout the day. Ordinarily arduous tasks feel easier. It’s less effortful to run around with our kids.
I distinctly remember throwing a ball around with my sons in the yard one day and liking it. This was new. To be honest, in the past I was less than enthusiastic about such endeavors. I am more of an indoorsy type, but my increased fitness level made my mind and body more interested, willing, and capable of participating.
Stephen Covey of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says that by exercising we develop muscles of proactivity. Those proactive muscles cause us to act based on the value of physical well-being rather than reacting to all of the forces that keep us from exercising. In doing so, we profoundly affect our self-esteem, our self-confidence and our self-discipline.
Take that first step to get the cycle started. Here is a list of possible first steps to get you moving:
•Put exercise on your calendar
•Put on your workout clothes and shoes
•Join a fitness club or class
•Plan to meet a friend for a workout
•Do sit ups or pushups during commercial breaks (don’t fast-forward through the commercials, let them be a workout space)
•Buy a new water bottle or workout shirt
•Search for fitness routines online
SLEEP
Sleep is the last, but definitely not least, subject I want to discuss that helps calm our nervous system. Poor sleep is one of the biggest contributors to developing depression and staying depressed. Both quantity and quality of sleep affect our life satisfaction.
In The Upward Spiral, Dr. Korb states that mentally poor sleep worsens our mood, lowers our pain threshold and interferes with learning and memory. It deters our focus and makes us more impulsive. Lack of good sleep also affects us physically. It can increase blood pressure, elevate stress levels and harm the immune system. Studies show poor sleep leads to poor eating choices and weight gain as well. It can even lead to an increased risk of drug or alcohol addiction.
Years ago, while training for a volunteer position with the juvenile justice system, I attended a
seminar on chemical dependency. The director of a well-respected rehabilitation center spoke to our group. She said, “Lack of sleep is crazy-making.” She’d seen the effects of poor sleep in many of the chemically dependent patients in her center. People think a drink before bed will relax them and help them sleep but in reality it affects their sleep stage progression (architecture) and the more often alcohol is used to ease into sleep the less it works. Alcohol abuse and depression both can lead to reductions in the amount of slow wave sleep and increases in the amount of REM sleep we experience, thus lowering the quality of sleep overall.
Sleep is comprised of several stages from stage one where we first drift off into a light sleep to the final stage, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, where our brain’s electrical activity is high. The most restorative sleep takes place in stages three and four when the electrical activity slows dramatically. This is called slow-wave sleep.
If we are woken up during the cycle the proper progression is disrupted and we automatically start the process over again at stage one, possibly missing the renewing sleep of stages three and four. This is one reason why it is crucial to strive for uninterrupted sleep.
We all have daily chemical fluctuations in our bodies that help monitor our hunger, body temperature and alertness. These fluctuations are called circadian rhythms. They tell our bodies when to prepare for sleep and waking up. Circadian rhythms also affect hormones like cortisol, testosterone and melatonin. Both cortisol and melatonin affect sleep.
The Quiet Rise of Introverts Page 7