{"id":1335,"date":"2018-02-02T00:55:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T00:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.resourcezoneinternational.com\/?p=1335"},"modified":"2019-07-05T05:46:59","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T05:46:59","slug":"getting-away-from-fight-or-flight-into-the-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.resourcezone.com.au\/?p=1335","title":{"rendered":"Getting Away from Fight or Flight & into the Flow"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The fight or flight response has long been understood as a deeply seated human reaction to pressure or stress.\u00a0 Biologically, when it occurs, adrenaline and cortisol are released into our bloodstream.\u00a0 This causes our respiratory rate to increase, our pupils to dilate, blood is taken away from our digestive tract and it is directed into our muscles and limbs.\u00a0 We are thereby given the ability to either flee or stay and put up a fight.<\/p>\n

When our deep seated frontal brain cortex fight or flight system is activated, we ten 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.\u00a0 In these circumstances, fear becomes the lens through which we see the world and we need an alternative to fight or flight – this is where the concept of “flow” is very useful.<\/p>\n

Flow is one of the more interesting ideas to come out of the psychology in recent years.\u00a0 It simply suggest that “flow” is a real and selectable alternative to either flight or fight.\u00a0 Flow is, in a nutshell, what some might describe as “being in the zone” or “hitting your stride” or “firing on all cylinders.”\u00a0 It’s likely you’ve experienced it – if not in ministry, then perhaps while playing a sport or involved in something creative.\u00a0 The Claremont university professor of psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described a flow state as including “a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provide clear clues as to how one is performing<\/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 Czikszentmihalyi shows below in the top right of this chart):<\/p>\n

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We achieve flow when our challenges are satisfyingly high and perceived abilities to tackle them are high also.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If we don’t do this, we start to experience the problematic left-hand side of the above chart – apathy, worry and anxiety.<\/p>\n

\nCsikszentmihalyi 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