Today I share with you one of the ultimate flow moments in my life so far, one, where I was so deep in “the zone” for hours that astonishing things happened.
Through this, I hope this helps you reflect on when and how you experience both “flow moments” and being “in the zone”
The London heatwave and the Thunderstorm
It has been hot in London the last week. Record-breaking hot, six days in a row with temperatures well above 30 (in the 90s, for American readers, and yes, remember nobody has AC in London!), with millions crying out for a thunderstorm to break the heatwave in this normally temperate region.
So, last Thursday I had a game of golf booked, so I jokingly predicted that as soon as I reached the part of the golf course most distant from the clubhouse, the torrential downpour would start.
The really odd thing is, I was certain it would happen, then it did.
At 3:30pm, having completed only 5 of the 18 holes of the round of golf, at a point on the heathland course about as far as we could get from the clubhouse, the ominous thunder we had been hearing turned into a torrential storm.
Musing on Flow
As the rain grew further in intensity, our group of three hid under some trees for what turned out to be about half an hour waiting for the worst of the rain to pass.
As we waited, we talked. We are coaches, so, linking this to golf, we mused on what it takes to perform at a high level at golf. At one point we got into a conversation about, as I wrote about earlier this week: “how do you go from great to elite?“.
After that, we moved onto talking about “flow”, being in “the zone”, the difference between thinking your way to a good golf shot and feeling it.
At one stage I mused on an almost Buddhist thought of getting to a point where “you are not really there”, where the self has dissolved and only the present moment exists.
Today, as I write this post, I realise how often I have written about flow and creating space. With over 1,000 daily posts, I simply searched on the term “flow” on my writing page and turned up this selection for you to persuse, should you wish:
- Flow – Michael Jordan and Jason Silva
- Seeking to be “in Flow” rather than to attain
- Flow and wisdom from Kung Fu Panda
- Masters practice incessantly, then improvise
- Only enough Structure to allow Flow
So, with all the talk as we stood under the trees, when we started back to the round of golf, I recognise now that I gradually started to think less and less about each golf shot, becoming more and more relaxed and simply present to the moment, more and more tranquil until something quite amazing happened.
A little golf explanation
For those who don’t know golf at all, I’ll give a little explantion, then please forgive me as I tell my golf story.
This is like a “fish” story, except that, metaphorically, this time I really did catch the fish 🙂
A little explanation then. My playing partners play off, respectively, handicaps of 13 and 16. This means they can expect to take that number of shots beyond the “par” of 72 shots to get around the 18 holes of the course.
So, when we played this week, the playing partner with a 13 handicap shot 83, so 11 over par or two below his handicap. The 16 handicap player shot 90, so 18 over par and two above his handicap.
At my very best, my handicap was 6 and for a number of years ranged between 6-8, statistically putting me around the top 20% of golfers, compared to handicaps of 13-16, a range that sits around the average. For comparison, only 1% of golfers average a handicap of “scratch” ie around 0.
Now, I haven’t played regular golf for 17 years and the only time I had taken out my clubs in the last two years was with these same two gentlemen a few weeks ago, where, oddly enough, we got driven off the course by rain after nine holes. Apparently, up until our moment under the trees, in the cumulative 14 holes with them, I had shown moments of my underlying ability, though the scoreboard certainly hadn’t shown it so far.
Entering “the zone” playing Golf
So, back to when we left the trees to play from hole number 6 onwards. As I said, I started to think less and less and flow more and more, but for holes 6-9, to complete the first half of our round, though I started to play better, nothing remarkable happened, but then we started the second half with the 10th hole.
On that 10th hole I hit a mighty drive that left me 140 yards to the hole. I then took out my 7 iron and hit a relaxed “punch” that I watched head right to the green and saw land and roll forwards. Happy that, rarely for me up to this point, I had actually landed a shot on the green, I turned away to walk towards where my playing partners were about to play their shots.
One of my playing partners looked at me and said: “didn’t you see that?”. I replied “yes, happy I hit the green”. He laughed, then said: “no, it went in the hole!”.
I’d “holed out” from 140 yards.
In all my rounds of golf since taking up the sport in my mid teens, I had never holed out from anything like that distance. The odds of this are something like 1:10,000.
So, definitely a moment, yet this fish story continues!
I then had a par 4 on the next hole, then rolled in a 50 foot side and downhill put on the 12th, finding myself 3 under par after 3 holes of the back nine.
At this point, walking to the 13th tee, I started to think. I very nearly started to think too much, to take myself out of “the zone”, to think, not feel my way around the course.
In fact, on the 13th I had a “double bogey”, taking 6 shots, so 2 over the par, taking me back to “only” 1 under par for the back nine.
Somehow that “blip” did not disrupt my flow, I stayed in the zone. I proceeded to birdie both the 14th and the 15th, so back to 3 under par of the back nine with only three holes to go.
By this stage my playing partners were simultaneously joking around with me about my play and recognising there was something pretty special happening.
In fact, on the 16th I was left with a 4 foot putt for par and they had fun heckling me gently. This reminded me that my best flow moments in sport came with people around and a level of “skin in the game”, of importance of succeeding when there was some pressure. I loved the well-meaning banter and smoothly sunk that putt.
Now to the 17th. By now my body was feeling a bit tired, it is a hilly course and I was carrying my clubs rather than pulling them on a trolley. I struggled with my drive and second shot but salvaged a bogey, so found myself on the 18th tee at 2 under par for the back 9 and 5 over for the round.
Still tired, my drive on the last hole, a par 5, was mis-timed and went way up into the air and didn’t go far. No problem, I thought, I simply have to take two more shots then two putts and finish with a par. Gosh I was beginning to fade, physically, as my second shot was even worse. No way I could reach the green with my third shot.
However, at that moment, I totally relaxed, confidently telling myself that I would hit my third to a point where I could hit a favourite wedge shot so close to the flat that I would tap in the last putt for a par to finish.
I hit the third shot deliberately to a range of about 85 yards, then, as I walked up to the ball, I was looking ahead to the flag on the green, which suddenly seemed in super focus close up to me. I could see exactly where to land my ball and how it would roll towards the flag.
This was another flow moment. I struck the wedge perfectly and it rolled up to within a foot of the hole for a “tap in” par.
I had stayed in “the zone”, with numerous “flow moments” for the last 13 of the 18 holes, playing those 13 holes in “level par” and finishing at 5 over, the best 13 hole sequence I have ever had and the lowest score I’ve had in nearly two decades.
Oh, and none of that was the ultimate flow moment. That moment came when one of my playing partners stood over their 25 foot putt for birdie on the 18th hole. I had a feeling about the putt, looked him in the eye from across the green as he was about to address the ball, told him quietly and with certainty that he was going to hole the putt. He then calmly and serenely stood over the putt and hit it perfectly. As soon as it left the putter, all three of us knew it would go in and it did.
So, that is my flow story.
Thank you for reading it, and I do encourage you to read through the other stories I linked to and reflect on when you have had flow moments and how that happens for you, as well a when you get in “the zone” for longer periods and what happens to get you there too.
If you like, there is a quiz you can take to learn more on this. In the post above mentioning Jason Silva, there is a short video of Jason talking about this where he mentions the work of the Flow Genome Project, where you can take their flow profile quiz to learn yours.