The last couple of weeks we’ve dug into the nitty-gritty of the foot-brain connection… the neurology and the mechanics of it all. Today I thought we’d take a break from anatomy and deepen into one of my other favourite topics…
Flow science. And the hidden cycle that determines how it impacts your life, for better or worse.
There’s never been a more important time to master flow. Without reliable access to this state, you simply can’t keep up.
Just like the human foot never evolved to wear shoes or walk on flat surfaces all day, the human brain never evolved to handle the flood of new info and blinding rate of change that has become the norm in our hyper-connected, overstimulated, AI-driven world.
It’s overwhelming.
And it’s accelerating.
Neuroscience has demonstrated that our conscious mind can only process roughly 40 bits of information per second.
Yet we’re all increasingly bombarded by way more than that almost every second of every day.
A typical conversation is estimated to require about 60 bits per second to follow. That’s why it’s difficult to follow 2 conversations at once… let alone do it while walking, or eating… or anything else. We quickly hit the bandwidth limit of conscious attention.
On the other hand, our nervous system as a whole, including our subconscious, is estimated to process millions to billions of bits of information per second.
It’s a huge difference.
Our conscious awareness simply can’t keep up.
That’s why we need access to flow states. Flow is no longer a performance hack…
It’s a survival skill.
In [FBC Issue #8- Subtract hours, multiply output] we discussed the Flow Cycle and the 4 distinct stages that must occur in sequence to experience flow.
We’ll briefly review these stages as a quick refresher, but today I want to go deeper.
There’s a bigger picture here, a greater level of mastery available.
This has everything to do with how you run and grow your business… but it’s so much more than that.
It’s key to optimising your health.
It’s essential for the quality of your relationships.
In fact, this impacts every domain of your life.
They’re all intimately connected.
It’s been said that “We don’t rise to the level of our greatness… we fall to the level of what we tolerate.”
You can’t build a great business but ignore your health. You can’t build great relationships… but be consistently broke. It just doesn’t work.
Weakness in one area eventually drags down all the others.
However, the flip side of that is also true. When you improve your relationships… your business tends to improve too. As stress drops, health and energy increase. Instead of a vicious cycle, it becomes a virtuous cycle of improvement.
One of the fastest, most efficient ways to activate this cycle is to build more flow into the different domains of your life. When that starts happening consistently you create Momentum.
And Momentum changes everything.
How Momentum Impacts Your Life:
You’ve felt this before.
One place we see it is in sports.
It’s that moment when something shifts…
And suddenly the game is different.
I used to feel it playing goal keeper in soccer. My team would be winning. Maybe up by a couple of goals. Playing well. Relaxed.
Then the shift happens. And suddenly my nervous system would kick into a state of readiness… because I knew the shots would be coming. We’d gone from building a lead, to defending that lead. It was time to be ready for the counterattack.
I’m sure you’ve felt it in business too.
There are times when everything just seems to be working. The team is engaged. The phone keeps ringing. The books are full. We’re hitting the targets.
And there are times when it’s not like that. It feels like a slog. A grind. Nothing feels easy.
The funny thing is, these 2 scenarios can look the same from the outside looking in.
But they feel totally different.
I remember a revelation I had around this years ago. I’d been through a period of extreme overwhelm and busyness. Everything felt hard. It was exhausting.
Thankfully, over time that shifted. I found myself in a much better place. My energy was better. I felt I was gaining traction rather than spinning my wheels. I felt positive and purposeful again.
I remember looking back and thinking…
“Man, I’m so glad I’m not as busy as I used to be. That was brutal.”
Immediately on the heels of that thought came another one…
“I’m actually busier than ever.”
That was a complete shock.
Because it was true. Objectively I was busier.
But it felt completely different. Calmer. Easier. More productive. Exciting even.
That’s the difference when you’re operating in momentum.
Momentum is the secret to Sustained Success and Peak Performance.
So how do we get there?
First, let’s briefly review the flow cycle. I know we’ve covered this before, but it’s worth locking in so you can practically implement it… it’s the building block of Momentum.
The Flow Cycle:
There are 4 stages:
- Struggle
- Release
- Flow
- Recovery
The first stage is Struggle. It’s the part that feels hard. It’s the push to get out of bed, get to the gym and punch out the first few reps, before the endorphins kick in.
Our brains resist this phase. Stress physiology kicks in- cortisol and noradrenalin spike. Suddenly every distraction feels urgent.
This is the first trap. People avoid this phase because it doesn’t feel good…
And as a result, they short-circuit the cycle and never get into flow. They keep advancing and retreating, never quite reaching the breakthrough point. This is one of the problems with our modern, hyper-distractable environment… it keeps us locked in struggle.
Every time our phone dings, or we get interrupted, it resets the cycle- we go right back to the start of the struggle phase again. It’s a recipe for exhaustion, frustration and burnout.
(If you take one action after reading this email, turning off all notifications on your phone and computer would be a great place to start.)
The other issue is that people misunderstand the struggle. Our brain is hardwired to avoid pain and conserve energy so it will interpret the uncomfortable struggle as…
“I’m doing something wrong. I should give up on this and focus on something else.”
Don’t believe it. This phase is cognitively heavy. It’s the prefrontal cortex preloading all the context and information that will be needed for effortless pattern recognition and novel connections once you hit flow.
The struggle is necessary. It’s what activates the brain for the next phase.
After that comes Release. Stress drops. Our neurochemistry shifts. Beta brainwaves shift to alpha. Sometimes this requires stepping away from the task briefly to let the unconscious work its magic- a walk, a light workout, a sauna.
(As you get better at reliably activating this cycle, the release phase can shorten to almost zero… a quick bathroom break, a glass of water, a few deep breaths… and then, bang…you’re ready to go.)
Now you’re into Flow. The overthinking, over-critical mind drops away (technically, frontal lobe activity drops and the default mode network quietens.) Time dilates- we enter a state of deep presence. Neurochemistry shifts again, flooding the brain with dopamine, serotonin, anandamide and endorphins. Theta and gamma brainwaves dominate. Performance goes through the roof.
It feels amazing… but we can’t stay there forever. There is a hard cost to producing all those neurotransmitters, and Recovery is required for the brain to relax and replenish itself.
This is the traditional map of flow, as described by author Steven Kotler in his book The Rise of Superman.
It’s the hour-by-hour progression we experience when we access flow during our day. It has been identified across all human cultures as one of the most rewarding and fulfilling states we can experience.
It’s where I generally write these newsletters from, taking a process that used to take days and compressing it into hours.
As chiropractors we are lucky enough to have this built into our typical workday. All great adjusters I know operate from this place. It’s one of the things we love about our job. I think it’s one of the reasons many chiropractors continue working well beyond typical retirement age.
There are many benefits of our work, but regular, reliable access to flow is high on the list (although many docs may not have ever thought of it in that way.)
I know for myself, I typically move through struggle and release within the first minute of my first patient… or more often, even before I arrive in the clinic… and then I’m in deep. Hours pass like minutes. I’m totally absorbed in each patient in front of me, recognising hidden patterns, blending intuition and logic, and problem solving at a highly accelerated pace.
(I think this is one of the reasons I often run late in clinic… the time dilation is real!)
This consistent ability to drop into flow makes us better doctors and happier people…
It feels good… but it doesn’t necessarily build our business.
I know getting great clinical results is the best marketing and practice-building strategy on the planet. I believe that 100%… in fact it’s one of the core values in our practice.
But there’s more.
A deeper cycle at play. When you learn to leverage this, everything in life just seems to click.
This is what explains those periods I mentioned earlier, where whole weeks or months can feel like a grind… and other times can feel almost effortless.
I have to thank Rian Doris, founder of FlowState.com, for opening my eyes to this. When I first read his writing on it, it was like he was describing exactly what I’d experienced… even written about… but didn’t have the framework or the science to explain.
After training 15,000 entrepreneurs and executives, Rian and his team discovered that there isn’t just an hour-to-hour flow cycle as described above…
There is also a Week-to-Week Flow Cycle.
The Week-to-Week Flow Cycle:
The hour-to-hour cycle describes our access to flow on any given day.
The week-to-week cycle describes our overall performance. Our Momentum.
It describes our flow-proneness over time (yes you can train yourself to be more flow-prone. It’s a superpower.)
It’s the reason one good week often follows another, building and creating momentum. It’s also the reason our bad weeks tend to do the same when things aren’t going so well.
It’s the explanation for this diagram that I introduced in [FBC #8], which I call The Peak and the Pit.
I described how my associates learning AK often go through this cycle, taking on new learning and developing a level of proficiency (the peak), only to learn more and be thrown back into chaos (the pit) before integrating and reaching a new level of mastery.
But it’s not just individuals that experience this.
Businesses do (your business does.)
Families do.
Whole economies do.
I see practices experience this when they first implement Better Balance Orthotics.
The Struggle phase in the beginning is uncomfortable. You’re integrating new systems, new knowledge and new paradigms. It can feel clunky. Communicating with patients can feel outside our comfort zone. It can feel like we don’t have time, or bandwidth, for something new.
Cognitively we’re taxing our frontal lobes with heavy decision-making. We’re fighting the temptation to take the easy way out and fall back into our old routines.
Simply recognising that this is the struggle phase of the Weekly Flow Cycle can make all the difference.
It’s normal. It’s meant to feel uncomfortable.
It’s the gateway to Release.
Just like in the hour-to-hour flow cycle, some people give up here…
And never experience the huge benefits for themselves, their patients and their practice that lie just on the other side of the discomfort.
For those that persist, breakthrough happens. Things quickly fall into place. They begin to feel normal. This is the Release phase. Communication smooths out. Processes become routine. Decision making lessens. Effort decreases as things become automatic.
Here’s a critical difference to the hourly flow cycle:
In the Week-to-Week cycle, we don’t drop into Flow… we drop into Momentum.
In Momentum, we experience more consistent periods of flow on a daily basis. Things feel easier. Results start stacking.
When this happens in a business, Group Flow occurs. Teamwork increases dramatically. Conflict drops. Everyone is on the same page.
(Group Flow is a fascinating topic… one I’ll save for another day. The studies on brainwave synchronisation between Navy Seals and jazz musicians are incredible.)
Increased Flow States also start to show up across multiple domains of life. For me what that looks like is:
- My health routines are on point. My diet and workouts feel easy and rewarding, a pleasure rather than a chore.
- Family flow happens- times when I’m completely present and engaged playing with my boys. The voice in my head reminding me of the work I should be doing silences. They feel it.
- Positivity and gratitude increase- focus shifts from what’s not working to what is working.
When we’re in Momentum, it feels like we’re literally being pulled forwards towards the life and results we want to create.
At this point we reach the final phase in the Week-to-Week Flow Cycle…
Integration.
This is where we no longer have to think about the process. It happens smoothly, routinely… almost effortlessly. We’ve built new habits.
Cognitively, we’ve shifted the load from the frontal cortex back to deeper, older parts of the brain like the striatum, which handles things on autopilot. This frees up the frontal cortex for thinking, planning and envisioning bigger goals.
We’ve reached the Peak.
It’s important to take a moment to breathe and celebrate here. If we’re not conscious about it, it’s easy to blow right through this phase and dive straight into the next pit. After all, this is the point when the next peak generally comes into view.
In my Better Balance example, this is what Integration looks like in my clinic:
BBOs are integrated into every level of our patient journey. They are part of our Initial Consult, part of our Report of Findings, part of our Care Plan, part of our Better Results Faster Workshop and part of our Ongoing Patient Education System.
They are an integral part of our paradigm. A logical and necessary health strategy for the modern world. If you’re a patient in my clinic, and you regularly wear shoes and walk on flat surfaces…
You’re going to understand the benefits of Better Balance Orthotics.
Whether they choose to act on that understanding or not, is of course up to them. But we’ve done our part to create the conditions that set them up for optimal results.
Of course, this isn’t just about orthotics. When you start to recognise how the Week-to-Week Flow Cycle is playing out across the multiple domains of your life, you gain the ability to smooth and accelerate the transitions from one phase to another…
And life becomes way more fun!
Cheers,
PS. I’m thinking of creating a clinical tool to offer people as an incentive to subscribe to The Foot-Brain Connection. What I have in mind is a “5 Minute Foot Reset Protocol” that creates immediate postural changes. My question is… does that sound like something you’d value? Something worth subscribing to a newsletter for?
If so, send me an email with ‘PROTOCOL’ and I’ll send you the clinical reference card when it’s ready.