M2M Day 141: Today, I simultaneously meditated and played the guitar
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For March, my goal is to play a 5-minute blues guitar solo.
Today, I didn’t practice. Instead, I just played.
I wasn’t trying to improve. I was just trying to enjoy it. And I did.
I found a long, looping backtrack on YouTube, pressed play, and then proceeded to solo over the track continuously for an hour. While I was playing, I wasn’t fully listening to the sounds of my guitar. Nor was I thinking about anything in particular.
Instead, I was in a highly-relaxed, fully-absorbed meditative state (which I also enjoyed two months ago while speed-cubing).
After sitting down to write this post, I realized that this “meditative state” is more popularly known as flow, a concept first described by psychology professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
Wikipedia explains…
In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.
So, yeah. I guess I was “in flow”.
For some reason, I’ve always been uncomfortable declaring this. I’m not exactly sure why. It just seems like one of those things that people make up, because… who can prove I wasn’t in flow?
Anyway, I’m not sure this is the point. My point is… Sometimes, it’s worth turning down the intensity, halting “progress”, and just trying to enjoy the act of making music (or anything else).
Read the next post. Read the previous post.