Finding FLOW to Grow

Have you ever wondered why some people excel at something and others struggle? Until recently, the commonly held view was that expert-level performance was simply the result of talent and “natural abilities.” Perhaps this view has limited your performance in some area and limited countless other athletes, musicians, artists, and others from fulfilling their performance potential as well. Fortunately, newer research confirms that talent only gets you so far and through hard work and focused deliberate practice, those with average inherent natural talent can excel at expert levels.??

According to Angela Duckworth, author of GRIT, the differences between expert performers and normal adult performance reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain. It takes habits, routines, and rituals that are aligned to a specific goal or behavior. Mastery requires much more than passion, and desire, but the development of specific behaviors that are intentionally put in place to affect the outcome. Remember, the adage, “practice makes perfect?” ?It’s almost true. It’s not just practice, it’s focused, quality practice. ????

In my role at Embark Behavioral Health , I often challenge myself and my teams to do things that we may not be able to do. And, because we believe in our company mission and our capabilities, we willingly take on audacious challenges like reducing the current all-time high levels of adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide to all-time lows by 2028. Pushing ourselves to levels of discomfort helps us grown and solve big problems. In fact, it’s almost impossible for us to get to the next level of omni-channel outreach without Deliberate Practice. We appreciate the burn that goes along with pushing through focused training sessions to learn new behaviors over long periods when we don’t want to. We know that we must exhibit an ability to persist in our message to others because we feel passionate about our mission and understand we need to persevere when we face obstacles. It’s this kind of focused passion and not intense emotions that makes the difference. It more about having sustained direction to reach our audience that gets us to the next level.

At Embark, we have a training method that involves routines and rituals that require regular peer practice sessions and asking for immediate feedback, followed by more deliberate practice, followed by more mistakes, followed by more reflection and coaching, followed by clearly defined stretch goals, and finally, measured quality behavior refinement.?We know, when we follow this disciplined process, it eventually leads us to “Flow,” that feeling of being so fully immersed in our activity that it becomes an effortless stream of focused, impassioned energy. When we are in Flow, the ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing music. Our whole being is involved, and we’re using our skills to the utmost. We are confident, fearless and at one with our message of healing. Time stands still and we experience new levels of focus and execution. We also know, that when we don't regularly implement deliberate practice, we’re more likely to perform in apprehension and fear… AND that doesn’t feel good to us or our audience, and our efforts don’t have the same result. ?

At any given moment, every day, we decide to live in fear or flow, because we know we can’t live both at once. One represents a behavior (resistance), and the other an experience (Flow). If we have the determination to push beyond our inherent talents and implement deliberate practice, we assure ourselves that we will achieve our long-term goals beyond what we, and perhaps others, ever thought possible. ???

For a summary of how “Deliberate Practice” is used across domains go to: sciencedirect.com/topics/deliberate-practice and for a more a more comprehensive resource on GRIT read GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. ?

Do you wonder if you have the Grit to be successful? Take your assessment here: https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/