You know those mornings where everything is just moving along the way you want it to...the people you are call are there, the appointments are easy to set, the pace is moving along and you feeling effective and efficient and wonderful as a result?
Then you go and make a cup of tea. Just to be ready for the next 'chapter' of your day. You are on fire!
And then you get back to the laptop or desk or laundry or hoover or book or whatever it is you have planned as your next thing to 'tackle' - and you just cannot find that spark of efficiency you seemed to have only moments ago. You sit, you stretch, you stand, you lift the metaphorical cushions of your couch to find all that energy, but it's just gone. Vanished! The tea gets colder as you resort to surfing or shuffling things around instead, and before you know it, you are another hour into the day and feeling grumpy because you are now being 'lazy', 'lacksadaisical', 'a wastrel', 'rubbish' (or whatever it is that your inner head voice is choosing to label you right now).
So how do we get back to that delicious feeling of flow? For me, it's wonder state number 3: Curiosity.
When I catch myself in that state, I have learned to get curious. I stop. I look around inside my head or on my desk for something, ONE thing, to get really really curious about. Now when I say curious, I am talking about the kind you see in children who have just found some new thing that they are just fascinated by. They become explorers of the microlevel. Wow, isn't this straw just the best thing ever? It's smooth, it's light, I can look through it, I can bang it on a table without getting shouted at, I can look through it, look! I can see you! I can push it into the floor and it squishes. It makes a sound when I rub it. It feels funny. It gets put in drinks...hmmm. Ooo, I can blow it and it makes your hair move! It's got stripes, I wonder what they do, it's red and white, and it bends, and it's hard to tear; I can blow through it; I can put it in my ear, hmmm that makes the bigger people laugh, I can see a small you - I can SEE you!!! wow....
Curiosity. Go find something to get curious about and get on in there, with full on absorbtion and fascination... before you know it, those questions and observations will be causing all sorts of things to happen inside your brain and your body. Almost instantly, you find you are back in flow, your creativity and drive are back and it's all because the chemicals in charge of that flow have been given a kick-start by your curiosity.
You see, curiosity is an emotion and all our emotions are connected to the body and the brain and the cool thing about that is that we can learn to control those chemicals and choose, yes!, choose to get in flow whenever we want to. Just by kick-starting that curiosity cycle again.
Curiosity: Go ahead, roll the word over your tongue, say it out loud and move it around in your mouth. The word comes comes from the Latin; curiosus 'careful, diligent, curious' (akin to cura "care") and is an emotion linked to natural inquisitive behaviour such as exploration, investigation, and learning. Scientists observe that humans and animals alike have the quality; it's that old and that ground into us! It's just there, ready for us to use and we can choose it whenever we want to.
We use the term 'curious' to denote the behaviour itself, being caused by the emotion of curiosity. As this emotion represents a drive to know new things, curiosity is the fuel of study and one way to get in flow. So, start to wonder 'how long will it take me to Dyson up that staircase?'; say 'I wonder how long it might take for Bill to call me back?' or even 'what can I say in my message to make him call back sooner...?'; 'I wonder what Mary will say when she gets home and sees I've cleaned up the kitchen for her...?'; 'I wonder what I can write to make the board understand how important this is for our company...?'.
Here's my recipe for getting curious and back in flow:
Ingredients required for this recipe are:
An egg timer + focussed attention + a bit of playfulness + the words "I wonder..."
(If you don't have an egg timer that pings, maybe use your mobile phone's alarm or something like that - I just like egg timers because they are fun and make a noise!)
The best way I have found to get curious, to experience curiosity is simply to say 'I wonder...?' and then add whatever the best question is for me at the time. Right now, the 'I wonder...' questions that I am asking myself are:
- 'I wonder where do I make this blog entry end?!'
- 'I wonder how I can make the best of the next 5 minutes?'
- 'I wonder how much more I can write in the next 5 minutes?',
- 'I wonder how I can make the instructions live inside you so you remember to take 3 or 5 or 7 minutes out to wonder?'.
Get absorbed, get curious and it won’t be long before you are making another well deserved cup of tea, feeling excited, happy, pleased with yourself, and probably full of curiosity about the next thing...
Yours with wonder,
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