Have you ever walked into a bar after a long day of solitary work, and felt weird when you tried to talk to girls? This is normal. In order to develop positive momentum towards being social, you first have to develop some flow.
Whenever you find yourself in a slump or feeling unconfident, do something to generate a little flow. If you just blew a set, don’t just stand around and above all else don’t start thinking about it. Do something to generate flow, be it talk to your wing, go dance, or socialize with someone else. Keep the flow going — in the field, analyzing and thinking is your worst enemy.
ijjji has a great post on flow, check it out here:
We LOVE flow. We HATE lack of flow. The insecurity it brings. When it makes things so hard and energy draining. When it makes us shiver and perform horribly. You hate it so much that you have created a fantasy that its possible to avoid this. That there is a thing called confidence or ’strong inner game’ that you can cultivate inside your brain, and that this thing will give you instant flow when you need it. That this thing will make your first steps easy and fluent as if you were already walking. That this thing will bring you up to speed in an instant with no extra effort. When you lack flow, you CLING to this dream… “Im not ready for this yet.. My confidence is too low. I must wait and later this will be easy.” But its just a dream. Flow doesnt come from a thing inside you. Inner game/confidence doesnt exist. Flow comes from actions alone.
So instead of forcing a first step/action, which is the ONLY thing that brings the flow you seek, you do the very WORST thing - you remain passive.
YOU WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN.. I SET YOU FREE.. I RELEASE YOU FROM THIS SLAVERY TO INSECURITIES.
Next time you feel insecure, you will remember what I told you:
-you lack nothing inside you. You are FINE.
-all you lack is a little FLOW and this is perfectly normal and OK.
-flow comes from actions alone.
Now that your eyes are open.. you will find many GREAT NEW WAYS of building flow.. You fill find your own unique ways that work especially well for you. You will not have to analyze or study. You will simply start noticing how certain actions create flow in your life, and you will know how to use them at times when you need more flow.
I call this STACKING - do a tiny thing to build some flow, and then do the big/hard thing at once afterwards, or schedule many things after one another, preferably starting with the smallest/easiest.
E.g. if I have a challenging meeting at work and notice that I feel insecure about it, I often tidy my office just before the meeting. For me, this works really great!
E.g. if I stall out in a pub and suddenly feel insecure about approaching, I do a tiny dance or even jump around a bit and then approach immediately.
Stacking is THE SUPERIOR way of building flow. The other way is called ‘faking’. It is harder and less effective so focus on stacking instead! (Faking example for the record: force myself to have confident or relaxed body language for half an hour prior to a meeting I feel insecure about.)
