How to spend more time in flow
The exact 4 step process I teach you in my coaching program
I want you to imagine that, all day long, you’re driving down a road.
This road has two lanes.
One lane is called Flow Lane.
The other lane is called Stress Lane.
When you’re in Flow Lane, the drive is smooth, fast, and fun.
You feel awake, alive, and present.
You’re at one with your car — it feels like you just think, and it does what you want it to do.
There are still potholes and slow drivers and tricky turns to navigate…
But you navigate them all with a light touch, enjoying the challenge and smiling as you zip through them.
You get to your destination faster.
You have plenty of gas left in the tank.
And you had so much fun that you’re already planning your next road trip.
When you’re in Stress Lane, the drive is hard, taxing, and slow.
It feels like an endless slog of a road trip — when are we going to get there??
It feels like you’re fighting with your car every step of the way — it’s creaking and complaining and wanting to stop, and you’re yelling at it to just get to the next rest stop.
There are potholes and slow drivers and tricky turns to navigate…
And you tense up at each one, sometimes navigating them too timidly, other times navigating them too aggressively, and constantly feeling like you’re a bad driver.
It takes ages to get to your destination.
The trip uses every ounce of gas you have.
And once you’re there, you want to sleep for a million years and never go on another road trip again.
Now here’s the thing about your brain…
Flow Lane is your brain’s natural lane.
That’s who you really are.
That’s where your brain wants to be.
This is the Real You — the truest expression of who you are and who you’re meant to be.
Your brain automatically switches to Stress Lane when it detects a threat.
Lots of stuff happens every day.
A good percentage of that stuff could be interpreted as a threat by your brain.
So chances are, at some point during the day, something will happen that your brain interprets as a threat and it automatically switches into Stress Lane.
This wouldn’t be a problem if your brain jumped into Stress Lane for a few minutes, resolved the threat, and then came back to Flow Lane…
The problem is that once your brain is in Stress Lane, it tends to STAY in Stress Lane…
Its threat-detection mechanism is extra sensitive when it’s in Stress Lane, so it starts seeing even MORE threats…
It’s burning through a lot of fuel and straining the car by staying in the Stress Lane for so long — and your brain can see that that’s happening, which ALSO feels like another threat…
It’s noticing that it’s not going as fast as it did when it was in Flow Lane, it starts worrying that it can’t make it to its destination, and that’s ANOTHER threat…
And it gets into a self-perpetuating cycle of detecting more threats and creating more threats and constantly feeling threatened, all of which keeps it firmly in Stress Lane.
If I was requesting a software update for our brains, this is the FIRST patch I would ask for.
Bug report:
When fighting threats, Brain gets stuck in protective overdrive even after initial threat is resolved.
This results in decreased performance and eventual system-wide overheat and crash.
Need automatic mechanism to signal when threat has been resolved so Brain can disable protective overdrive and resume normal operations.Unfortunately, there’s no software update coming for our brains.
Maybe there will be one millions of years from now, as evolution does its thing.
But there’s no update coming for OUR specific brains today.
We’re stuck with what we’ve got.
But luckily, you can update your brain’s software yourself.
Here’s how you do it.
Step 1: Identify the specific thing that spooked your brain 👻
It’s important to get specific about what set your brain off in THIS situation and WHY.
In my coaching program, we use the Circumstance | Thought → Feeling → Action → Result framework to identify this quickly and easily every single time.
Step 2: Manually signal to your brain that the threat has been resolved 🏁
In my coaching program, I teach you 10 specific techniques for doing this ✋🏽🤚🏽
No BS.
No sticking your head in the sand and saying “this is fine” while Rome burns.
I’m talking TRUE threat resolution – where we take your brain 100% seriously…
But still check its sources, pressure-test its assumptions, and work with it to find the best path forward.
Step 3: Watch your brain disable protective overdrive and switch back to Flow Lane 🚗
Step 4: Repeat until it becomes automatic 🔄
(Because luckily, if you do anything enough times, your brain will automate it.)
This is the exact process I teach inside my coaching program.
The Foundational Course lays out exactly how to do these steps.
The Case Study Library gives you plenty of real-life examples to learn from.
And Coaching gives you the one-on-one support you need to put this into practice.
(Plus, the coaching comes in two different tiers, so you can choose the option that best fits your budget and schedule :)
I am on a mission to teach this toolkit to every high-stress high achiever in the world.
Because once you’re in Flow Lane, you cannot be stopped.
You can handle ANYTHING and get to destinations you can’t even imagine.
So come learn this toolkit.
Come learn how to navigate yourself back into Flow Lane quickly and reliably, again and again.
And then get back to doing your best work and feeling at home within yourself while you do it.
Learn all about how the program works here.
And then book a free consult call with me to talk about getting started :)
What my clients have to say…
“I feel less helplessness. There's so much more that's in my control, in terms of taking the next step or making a decision.
And that makes me feel more optimistic and confident in my decision making.
I just feel more at ease.”
—Client | VP - Global Product, Visa
Did you know I have a full table of contents, where all my work is categorized by topic, so you can easily find what you need right now? Check it out below! :)
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