By Dan Goodwin

There’s a state of creativity where your entire focus is only on creating what you’re creating. The outside world disappears into the background, and only one thing in the world matters, that creative act you’re immersed in.

The ease at which you’re able to create is sky high, the ideas and thoughts are hurtling through you almost more quickly than you’re able to lay them down, and your consciousness switches to an alternative state, one that’s absent of criticism and analysis and insecurities. The excitement and joy you feel inside is reflected by the beaming grin on your face, and time itself seems to dissolve into some abstract concept you’re neither aware of nor care about.

Welcome to Total Flow.

All of us who create have experienced this creative Total Flow at some point in our creative lives, and the aim is to reach this state as often as we can. So how do we get there?

Total Flow begins by having the right foundations in place.

If we use the analogy of a professional athlete and their physical fitness for a moment. The athlete doesn’t decide she’s going to run a marathon a week before the event. She decides many months in advance and then begins a training regime to prepare herself to be in the best possible shape for the marathon. The athlete will train every day, and build that underlying level of fitness up to a point where she can run for miles barely breaking a sweat.

Think about your creative life right now. What sort of level is your underlying creative fitness at?

How often do you train and practice? How often does your creativity get a good workout of each its vital active parts?

Many of us completely ignore this concept and expect to go through periods of very little or no creativity, then be able to create at our peak at a moment’s notice. It’s very rarely happens, if ever, and you’re simply setting yourself up for disappointment.

Another way to imagine this Total Flow concept is as a pan of water on a stove. The amount of energy it requires to heat the water from room temperature to boiling is many times more than that needed to boil the water from a state of already simmering.

If you keep your creativity simmering by investing time in it each and every day, then to reach that state of boiling - that Total Flow - requires only a small increase in energy and creativity. If you’re starting with the equivalent of a pan of cold water each time, the extra effort needed is huge, and you’re likely to run out of energy before you reach the boil.

Total Flow is a state of creativity that any of us can reach, and something we take steps to experience more often and more easily.

But only if we make that regular investment - build up our underlying creative fitness, keep our creativity simmering away - by creating for a minimum amount each day.

Topics: Becky Harber, Dr. Frank Harber, Frank Harber |

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