{"id":2647,"date":"2022-07-04T09:29:36","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T23:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.australiancoachingcollective.com.au\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2022-07-04T09:29:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T23:29:37","slug":"getting-away-from-fight-or-flight-into-the-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.australiancoachingcollective.com.au\/index.php\/2022\/07\/04\/getting-away-from-fight-or-flight-into-the-flow\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Away from Fight or Flight & into the Flow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The fight or flight response has long been understood as a deep seated human reaction to pressure or stress.  Biologically, when it occurs, adrenaline and cortisol are released into our bloodstream.  This causes our respiratory rate to increase, our pupils to dilate, blood is taken away from our digestive tract and directed into our muscles and limbs.  We are thereby given the ability to either flee or stay and put up a fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our deep seated frontal brain cortex fight or flight system is activated, we tend to perceive everything in our environment as a possible threat to our survival. Although this may have been very necessary many years ago to survive a harsher world, this reaction is often less appropriate today, especially in the western world, when the triggers are considerably smaller and our body is therefore over-reacting.  In these circumstances, fear becomes the lens through which we see the world and we need an alternative to fight or flight \u2013 this is where the concept of \u201cflow\u201d is very useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flow is one of the more interesting ideas to come out of psychology in recent years.\u00a0 It simply suggests that \u201cflow\u201d is a real alternative to either flight or fight.\u00a0 Flow is, in a nutshell, what some might describe as \u201cbeing in the zone\u201d or \u201chitting your stride\u201d or \u201cfiring on all cylinders.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s likely you\u2019ve experienced it \u2013 if not in work, then perhaps while playing a sport or involved in something creative.\u00a0 The Claremont university professor of psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a flow state as \u201ca sense that one\u2019s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how one is performing.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 This comes down to the interplay between challenge and skill.\u00a0 When both are higher than your average, you can obtain flow (or what Csikszentmihalyi shows below in the top right of this chart):<\/p>\n\n\n

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We achieve flow when our challenges are satisfyingly high and perceived abilities to tackle them are high also.  In fact the more we seek to increase our abilities by learning new skills and acquiring greater knowledge, flow, control and the capacity to relax are made much easier.  If we don\u2019t do this, we start to experience the problematic left-hand side of the above chart \u2013 apathy, worry and anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Csikszentmihalyi goes on to describe five ways that individuals can cultivate or develop their own capacity to adopt flow as a reaction. These are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n