Start at the beginning. In flow coaching, we’re taught to stack the intrinsic drivers, one by one, in order: Identify multiple curiosities to start. Combine curiosities into passion. Attach passion to a greater purpose. Have the ability to autonomously pursue your passion and purpose. Continue to grow and master your…

Fiero is an emotional mixed bag Nostalgia, the returning (nostos) to the pain (algos), produces positive feelings, self-esteem, and feelings of love while reducing loneliness and meaninglessness (126). Humans, like failure, flow, and fiero, have an innate desire for happy endings, to look back at the journey and not void discomfort and trial, but cherish it…

The fiero of milestones Fiero need not be reserved for those brief seconds after a successful shot or goal, nor the beginning or end of a game. As Jesper Juuel ponders, “It seems that the more time we invest into overcoming a challenge (be it completing a game, or simply overcoming a small subtask)…

The variety of experiences in athletics is not an unemotional affair. Winning and losing, succeeding and failing generates a wide range of emotions. Contrastingly, flow is mostly stoic in its very nature characterized by its selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and (information) richness as the prefrontal cortex shuts down in transient hypofrontality…

Happiness research reveals, just as the previous paradox of failure insinuated, we are at our best not having fun or in leisure, but when our skills are challenged. “We have been conditioned to believe that the wrong things will make us lastingly happy,” Sonja Lyuomirsky, author of The How of…

There is a biologically built-in framework that gets us through failure and into flow, and that structure is games. Before that, a look at flow, its benefits, and its underlying structure in connection and comparison to games. The basics of flow Flow, the phenomenon and state of consciousness where we feel our best and…

Failure can fracture The fork in the road that is failure depends on our ability to distance or not distance ourselves from the failure. Framing failure is the name of the game. Attribution theory, or how blame is assigned in this case, illuminates corresponding levels of effort and mindset (21). Loci is similar…

‘Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.” ~Thanos One of the key activities from flow coaching is identifying your primary and secondary flow activities. The primary activities are the ones you used to do as a kid and stopped doing as you got older — baseball, crafts, skiing, etc. The…

Failure is fundamental to expertise. Psychologist Friedrich Nietzsche got it right that struggle is necessary. All expertise is acquired through talent and effort, regardless of supposed innate talent. Improvement of a skill requires deliberate practice as popularized by Anders Ericson, practice that is purposeful, systematic, and extremely taxing (1). This…