Tag Archives: Acceleritis

Extending Stay in Flow State

Volume 2, Issue 32

Flow state aka the Zone is when you are functioning perfectly without effort. Everything is flowing along as if doing itself and the reaction at large to your performance is ideal.

When you are there, what often happens is that you let out the clutch a little bit too far on the edit rate for your impulses — and out pops an action that fails in the real world and suddenly you are not in the Zone any more.

Anger at self then impulsively arises, ensuring that re-entry to Flow will be impeded.

The way to re-optimize this edit-slackening program is for you to realize that you are going strong so you have naturally started to assume that every arising in your mind is certain to be brilliant and so you should do it right away. Staying stoically unattached to your great performance without letting it go to your head or bring you into a state of overconfidence is a delicate balancing act that should go on as automatic background menschness. This can be aided by a sense of humor and loving distance from your own ego.

All of this head action is optimally executed sans words in the head. To the extent that you hear inner vocalization you might be in Observer state but not Flow. Observer state is the valuable entry state for Flow, characterized by vivid inner attention so you see your ego for what it is and can reprogram your own actions rather than acting robotically — to some extent.

When that lens is operating one can easily slip into the Zone doing something in which one is well practiced, so long as there is no attachment to outcome, and so long as you are doing the thing because you like to do that thing, it’s your thing.

Attachment to other people’s opinions of you can keep you out of both these states, especially Flow. Yet even people with high detachment — fatalists resolved to take whatever comes stoically — give up this attachment last. We are social beings. Death is not as poignant as shame.

The lens of utter detachment can be put on and worn. It doesn’t just sit lightly on your nose, it sinks into your being, you feel it bodily, your breathing is easier, you’re comfortable in your skin, secure, liking your self, the character you play on the stage of life.

This is effortful today. Acceleritis did not exist in Jesus’ day or he might not have gotten to such a high level (leaving aside divinity for the sake of argument).

Every time a challenge to your sense of self arises you need to write it down and come back to it in contemplation until it is solved. You take action items and implement them. Doing this systematically leads to a sense of being secure with who you are. It is essentially the methodological root of stoicism. One cannot muster the strength to embody stoicism (not just being stoic in one’s mind) unless one has worked out the antagonistic voices in one’s head that pull you down. This unglamorously cannot be done without lists. And time alone for contemplation. Blank pads laying around come in handy for drawing automatic situational schematics and jotting trigger words.

Negative outcomes one is desperately trying to avoid can lose their force if one vividly imagines those outcomes actually happening and how one would ideally deal with them. This contemplation of the corpse* burns out fear of dreaded outcomes. In knowing oneself and relative fearlessness, one can act in freedom, whereupon the Flow state is just the natural next stage in the process.

Best to all,

Bill

*Contemplation of “horrible” things is an ancient technique for “burning out” their apparently (but not truly) inherent “horribleness”.

P.S. Have you heard about “Giving Tuesday”? It follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday and is much more uplifting. On Tuesday, November 27, charities, families, businesses and individuals are coming together to transform the way people think about, talk about and participate in the giving season.

“Join a national celebration of our great tradition of generosity” at http://givingtuesday.org/.

Set Yourself Up To Cultivate “Aha!” Moments

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Being a creative being you are constantly having “Aha!” moments. In the Acceleritis cloud, however, like everyone else you may rarely notice your own “Aha!” moments.

These insights often go by unnoticed simply because they are obvious to you and you have heard them before. However, your subconscious continues to present them to you because some aspect of the insight has still not been fully realized. There is another layer there your subconscious wants you to get.

Give yourself permission to have “Aha!” moments. Give proper inner recognition to “Aha!” moments. Expect these moments to try to sneak by. Jot down even one-word fragments your mind seems to have some reason to offer you. These may be words and/or they may be images, feelings, or a cluster of all of these in a jumble. What do they mean? What action is indicated?

One test of the relevancy of what seems to be an old idea is, if it is so obvious, have you fully acted on it? If not, what is stopping you?

The day starts with dream wisps fast fading. Assume there is an encoded message that some part of you is communicating to some other part of you. Jot down the content in the fewest words that will bring back the original dream. We call these trigger words because they trigger whole thought-streams and/or other memories encapsulated in the most condensed code-words that capture the essence of the meaning the content has for you.

The shower is another place where ideas seem to come to everyone. Perhaps it is the negative ionization created by the water stream evoking a physical brain process. Develop memory discipline to count the number of ideas you have had in the shower and string together the keywords for those ideas into one funny picture. Have paper or electronics or whatever you use to jot notes close by at all times including right outside the shower and next to the bed and in fact wherever you might happen to be.

Clearing the mind is conducive to getting new ideas. A change of scene helps, especially stepping outside into nature and away from the work you have been doing. A sense of goofing off, not working on anything, just taking a break, a mini-vacation, giving yourself permission to just veg out, deeply enjoying just breathing — this often leads to the highest quality ideas of the day.

As the mind tries to continue what it has been obsessed with, gently cut off any words in midstream. The fewer words the more likely the subtlest parts of the self will be able to get an “Aha!” idea in edgewise.

A large sheet of blank paper can evoke automatic writing and/or drawing, e.g. a freeform diagram with trigger-word ideas or entities or processes in balloons connected by arrows or lines to other balloons with trigger words in them.

Meditation with eyes closed either on a chair sitting up straight, or face down on the backs of your hands on the floor stretched out (Sphinx position), just breathing and waiting and listening can summon a Master voice that speaks only deep truth to you, sometimes when you least expect it.

If you give presentations, creative Flow can occur if you prepare and rehearse but then avoid referring to any notes — just have fun with it, and take the tack “I can’t wait to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Just have fun with every moment and everything else will work itself out.

Best to all,

Bill

Rooting Out Hidden Fear

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Volume 2, Issue 21

Negative emotion and Flow state cannot happen simultaneously within a person. If the objective is Flow state, the ecstasy of simply being, with freedom in place of fear, then to thine own self be true and use the Observer state to root out things you are hiding even from yourself, and make a deal with yourself to expunge all negative emotion — including fear.

In Flow state, inspirations keep popping even in the middle of a sentence and you incorporate them easefully because you are not afraid you might say the wrong thing. Not because saying the wrong thing is impossible in Flow but because it is irrelevant. If you are communicating in the Flow state, the object is not being right but instead collectively reaching truth and right action — as Socrates pioneered.

Fear has been prevalent since the dawn of recorded history, except for those who have attained Observer and Flow states. We postulate that the recording of history, which occurred as the result of written language, therefore started at the same time as Acceleritis — the pandemic disease of the mind caused by information overload and triggered by written language itself.

Today there is more rational reason for fear than ever before. Practically no one has enough money to not live in fear of losing one’s job. Companies are turning over personnel rapidly and cutting jobs. The average person is keeping his or head down rather than trying to fix things because stepping forward is a risk that could go either way.

Some people are afraid because to their own minds they still have not proven themselves. There might be a hidden senator in their mind such as the taped and aped voice of e.g. their verbally abusive parent. They might feel the need to prove themselves to that mother, father, spouse, critic or rival sibling, or one of the people who has been unknowingly projected into taking over one of those roles. Or they might have achieved a degree of autonomy and do not need anyone else’s approval, but having achieved a degree of nobility and having taken on the world’s problems, they might be afraid they will die before succeeding in some noble cause.

Even in the latter case, hidden fear precludes Flow state. Observer state must be cultivated to remove the hidden blockages within and thus enable Flow state. One may continue to pursue the noble cause but without a fear of failing, with acceptance of whatever the outcome may be, still doing one’s best to make the dream come true. In this manner one will rest within the higher states, often rising to Flow and thereby maximizing the probability of achieving the objective.

Observer state can be used to detect flashes of fear that come and go so fast one would not be aware of them in lower consciousness levels. In Observer state, one is actually observing the mental function of repression taking place. This is an amazing feeling. Observer state is not as dramatically amazing as Flow state but it too has its amazing moments, yours for the taking.

Best to all,

Bill

In the First Waking Moments, Remember Observer State

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Volume 2, Issue 20

Observer state is a mindset in which you are not so caught in the process of your own emotions, and thus you are able to also simultaneously observe and analyze them somewhat impassively. This is a lens you sometimes find yourself wearing which makes you more effective and creative at changing the conditions that cause negative emotions. It also makes you more able to flick into the Zone where your performance and creativity are further upshifted.

In the Observer state, we hypothesize that information processing is going on largely in the prefrontal lobes. In the Flow state (aka the Zone) we postulate whole-brain balanced and meshed information processing.

The Human Effectiveness Institute has developed techniques to empower people to spend more time in these states, which are conducive to a happy successful purposeful life. Acceleritis is the cultural condition caused by the speedup in human evolution and daily information overload apparently caused by the invention of written language — according to our theory. Acceleritis raises the challenge slope facing human beings every day and makes it harder for us to use the new brain evolved in just a relative eyeblink of the usual evolutionary timescale. The new brain triggered the invention of writing, and the effects are now overloading that new brain, kind of like a four-year-old kid trying to control a Ferrari.

If people in power spent more time in these states, they would make better decisions causing less suffering than at present. If people not in power spent more time in these states, they would move into power and thus be able — if not seduced by the ego — to bring about positive change. Hence, the mission of the Institute is to spread experiential knowledge of these states, and the techniques for achieving and maintaining them.

The first moments of waking up in the morning are a perfect time to remember the Observer state. As the day begins, so shall it most likely go, until one’s will has become strong enough to overcome a bad start.

First, while remaining in the hypnagogic state by avoiding the use of language orally or mentally, and filtering out any distractions, stay focused on the feeling of whatever dreams you had, and recapture whatever images you can from those dreams. Stay with the feelings and images a moment longer until you can get a hunch as to the possible sense of those dreams — what is the message from your subconscious? Jot down notes as soon as you feel you have to actually open your eyes and get out of bed.

Even better if you can move on to your day while still in bed and still sleeping as far as anyone can tell. Get a fix on the possible significance of the day, what you can potentially accomplish. Visualize an upside outcome that will make you happy when you go to sleep next. This is your strong intention, your Will. Feel it. Then see what could go wrong and come up with ideas as to how to deal with those challenges. No one in Acceleritis has the luxury of much time to spend on such thinking, so you can settle for brief flashes of the direction of an idea to be worked out in detail later. Making notes while they are fresh in your mind will be a huge advantage.

The older parts of the brain such as the amygdala are involved in the ego process, which keeps you out of the two higher states of consciousness, Observer and Flow. This ego process is driven by fear of failure in one form or another, and derives from excessive attachment, which itself is the product of past events perceived as failures that have not been fully assimilated as wonderful learning experiences. The Observer lens helps one float upward out of this debris and gain perspective on it. Then one can enter the Zone, typically in an activity one has practiced for a long time.

Best to all.

Bill