LIFE LESSONS | CREATIVITY | FLOW

The Alchemy of Cold Tea and Hot Creativity: A Journey into the Euphoria of Flow

From self-doubt to the sea of sentences that matter and messages that make meaning

I am a heavy drinker of tea. Especially a herbal mix called Anti Cyclone from T-Leaf (a local and the best tea producer I have ever found). Its aroma is simply irresistible.

So, today, I made a massive pot of Anti Cyclone in the morning, and while it was getting ready and spreading its alluring scent, I started to work on an article I needed to send to my client in a couple of days.

Four hours later, I realised that the teapot was cold, and I had been so immersed in my work that I forgot even to pour the tea. I had been in a flow.

I was almost euphoric. Or at least delightfully thirsty after being in the echo chamber of my sentences for so long.

I love it when flow takes you, and everything else just melts away. You are just one with the work; angels sing, and unicorns fart. In this article, I let myself loose and take you on the butterfly wings of my euphoria.

Gratitude to a man whose name is impossible to pronounce

I remembered the person who invented the term flow, Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021). He was a world-renowned researcher of psychology and a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University in the USA.

These giants help us understand how things work and how we can get more out of our work without killing ourselves.

Csikszentmihalyi once said:

“Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.”

Freely chosen discipline is the key

Being in a flow requires trust that we can do the task and acquire the skills to complete the work if we don’t yet have the capability. We don’t always know beforehand how, but we do know that we will. But we have chosen the path freely and willingly.

The flow will never manifest without this free choice, but without faith in our path and trust that we can make it, we become victims of our fears and doubts. So, let’s have confidence and trust our skills and capability to learn anything we need to jump into the flow and let it carry us.

Adventures await us just here, just now.

It took me decades to build enough trust in my writing skills in English. But now I am in a flow most of the time when I open my MacBook Air and start typing. The road was long. I often painfully bit my tongue (both literally and literally) because of self-doubts and fears.

So, it wasn’t always a journey with tongue in cheek.

Ridicule, rejection and shame were the prices I paid for getting into flow

A few years ago, I was working for a large organisation. My boss was the General Manager of our business area and the Queen of Proofreading. Everything I wrote, she edited, changing the underlying meaning and making it dull and mediocre, but perfectly punctuated and grammatically so correct that you could have dried a swamp with the result.

I hated her. I hated her emails to the staff. She called them ‘Raven’s Rants’. Raven was a moniker she adopted to make her feel more casual. She thought that Rachel was not cool enough. But there was nothing cool or casual in her uptight way to cause people to feel insecure and lost. She believed that those Rants were funny. They spread, at best, a sardonic grin on our faces, but nobody dared to say anything.

But one good thing emerged from those three years under her metaphorically ink-stained thumb. I realised that I could write in English and I could learn to become better at it.

The realisation came as lightning once when I had submitted a report that she didn’t edit because she was overseas. One of the recipients came to me to thank me and said, “I thought that the GM was correct when she told us that she had to proofread everything because your English as a foreigner wasn’t up to scratch. But this is a fantastic report, much better than we usually get from her. You made it so much more readable and easy to digest. Next time, don’t let her touch your reports”.

Sweet feedback washed over me as I looked at the person taking the pain away. I was reborn. I was like Mary Magdalene staring at the proverbial empty tomb. I was witnessing a miracle — and I was the miracle. Hallelujah.

Gradually, I could feel a smile creeping up from my kneecaps, where it had been hiding for three long years, metaphorically speaking, due to the GM’s constant demands. It travelled to my tummy, prompting a deep breath, and finally leapt onto my lips, emanating from my eyes towards the person who had saved my life. Bless that messenger of positive feedback. At that moment, I resolved to make my living through writing before my time was up.

All that ridicule, rejection and shame I had experienced turned into energy, hope and determination. The key was consistency.

I didn’t give up; I didn’t give in — I have been writing my whole life, and switching from my mother tongue to English wasn’t that big of a leap. But it was a leap of faith. I had to believe in me. I had to trust that I could learn a new language — earn it before I could earn with it — but I didn’t need to strangle myself with the ropes of writing because I already had decades of practice in another language. I knew how to set the sails.

Three learnings from this episode of epiphany

You are never too old to feel inferior. However long your expertise in your field, sometimes something from the left field can get you down in seconds.

It’s easy to talk about resilience when shit has not yet contacted the blades, and the fan is merrily rotating, but once the brown substance is on your face, you need to have some cleaning utensils. The best tool for that is honest feedback. You are never as bad as you think. You will never sink if you swim.

And remember, nasty comments and irreverence are not feedback but biases that actually tell how good you are. If your honest work can cause such nastiness to raise its ugly a-hole, staring at your sincere labour, you are on the winning side. It’s a badge of honour to be despised by bozos.

Once you have got over the first shock, keep going. Keep swimming. Do not give the pleasure of glee to spread on the faces of those who think otherwise. You can, if you will — and you will if you believe that tomorrow is never worse than yesterday and always better than today. And today is already good because you didn’t give up.

You are always ready. If you keep going, you are ready when the lightning strikes. And when that happens, bottle it because it will be your torch in any tunnel your journey may take you through. When coming from an honest heart, sweet feedback and words of encouragement are worthy of keeping in the bottle. It will warm your heart and enlighten your mind, but at the same time, it keeps your spirit humble and seeking.

You are always young enough to start again. My hero and mentor in life, Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, decided to chronicle his life’s work in 30 volumes of a novel called The New Human Revolution. He was 65 when he made that commitment to write it. Now, he is in his mid-90s and published the final volume a couple of years ago. Talking about examples!

I am where I always wanted to be: on my way there!

I feel lucky and content when thinking about Csikszentmihalyi and his brilliant concept of flow or Ikeda’s all-encompassing wisdom and courage to renew, rethink and revive.

It’s never too late to start something your soul desires, your heart yearns to feel, and your mind is excited about.

Inferiority is part of life and the price you pay for entry to the halls of flow if you believe that you are ready as you are — and that it is never too late, but just the right time to dive in.

So, my morning went in flow, and the teapot was cold, but my heart was warm. Then I started writing this, and the re-heated teapot was cold again after a while, but my heart sang despite my buttocks hurting after sitting on them the whole day.

Finally, after two splendid flows, I could make a fresh pot of tea and enjoy the fruits of my flow. Anti Cyclone didn’t disappoint me with its aroma.

I am editing this standing to give my bum something else to think about, and I drink slowly my tea while proofreading. Anti Cyclone tastes so smooth and gentle. It’s like a good feedback. What a beautiful way to celebrate the flow.

What is your flow experience? And have you ever tasted Anti Cyclone? It could well put you in the flow.

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