Finding Flow: Creating a Life Worth Being Fully Present For

A few years ago, I first read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. I had recently been introduced to the concept of “flow state” and was fascinated by it. I wanted to study and learn how to achieve it, particularly to help me overcome my fears in whitewater kayaking and to reach higher performance goals in my skiing.

So, I tried to practice it. And, while I feel like I have regularly experienced flow throughout my life, I never really felt that all of my efforts to understand it moved the line toward the goals I was trying to achieve.

Recently, a friend suggested Finding Flow for the ACE CoLab Community Book Circle. I was curious to return to Csikszentmihalyi’s work and learn more about a concept that had intrigued me years earlier.

But this book was not what I was expecting.

I went into it thinking about flow as a state of peak performance. Instead, I found myself thinking about attention, engagement, meaning, purpose, and how we choose to spend the limited time and energy we have.

It hit exactly where I was in life and was exactly what I needed to read.

Finding Flow explores something much bigger than performing at our best in sports, work, or any other pursuit. It asks us to consider what makes an experience worth having in the first place. Why do some experiences leave us feeling energized and alive while others drain us? Why can we have everything we thought we wanted and still feel unfulfilled? How much of our lives are we actively choosing, and how much are we simply moving through on autopilot?

One of the ideas that stood out to me most was the role of attention. Our attention is one of our most valuable resources, yet it is incredibly easy to give it away. We spend our days responding to emails, checking our phones, completing tasks, worrying about what comes next, or thinking about what has already happened. We can be incredibly busy without ever being fully engaged in what we are doing.

Flow asks us to be present.

I think this is one of the reasons I have always been drawn to adventure. When I am skiing a challenging line, kayaking a rapid, exploring somewhere new, or doing something that requires my full attention, there isn’t much room for anything else. I have to be where I am.

But perhaps the lesson isn’t that we need more extreme experiences to feel alive. Maybe it is learning how to bring that same level of attention and engagement into more of our lives.

Flow often exists in the space between boredom and overwhelm, when the challenge in front of us stretches our abilities without exceeding them. As our skills grow, our challenges have to evolve with us. What once required our complete attention eventually becomes comfortable, and we have to decide where we want to grow next.

That idea feels very different to me today than it did when I first read Flow.

Back then, I wanted to know how flow could help me perform better.

Now, I find myself much more interested in what flow can teach me about living better.

What deserves my attention? What challenges are worth pursuing? What experiences leave me feeling energized, connected, and alive? Where am I simply going through the motions? And how can I become a more active participant in creating the experiences that make my life meaningful?

Maybe we spend too much time thinking about fulfillment as something we will eventually reach. We tell ourselves it is waiting after the next goal, accomplishment, career move, adventure, or version of ourselves we are working toward.

But most of our lives happen between those moments.

Perhaps the goal isn’t to constantly search for the next thing that will make life feel meaningful. Perhaps it is to become more intentional about how we engage with the life we already have while continuing to create opportunities to learn, challenge ourselves, connect, and grow.

Years ago, I picked up Flow because I wanted to become a better skier and kayaker.

Reading Finding Flow, I found myself asking a much bigger question: “What does it mean to create a life worth being fully present for?”

I don’t think there is just one answer, but I think it starts by paying attention. Perhaps fulfillment is not something we find. Perhaps it is something we practice.