How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 101

my door, I notice them and it's not a shock to return to the
outside world. But until that happens I'm totally engrossed."
"In chat sessions ± I chat often enough that ``talking through the
keyboard has become second nature."
"Relaxed . . . I guess just . . . well . . . nothing. I wasn't feeling
anything until I'd sit back and relax my eyes a bit . . . then I'd
realize that I had more stuff that I should be doing, but I'd just sit
here and keep clicking and reading away."
"I was in a heated discussion on a chat network for the better
part of two hours. I cannot remember what the subject was
about, but all I knew was I was totally blind to the world."
A Loss of Self-Consciousness
People tend to lose awareness of self, due to the experiencing of
flow state. In addition, people tend to lose the function of
defending and protecting themselves because of flow. This is a
common experience from web users, such as the following
responses below from participants in a study of web flow:
"Whether it is reading newsgroups or doing a search for a
particular thing I tend to concentrate and ``lose myself."
"I become the persona I present in the newsgroup, not my ``real
self. It's my other identity."
"I am a smoker, I can't smoke in my office, and sometimes I won't
even want a cigarette for several hours [when in the flow state]."
"How do I feel? I tend to shut out my feelings too ± if I'm
reading/interacting with good content, I put off my feeling that I
need to go to the bathroom, that I am hungry, etc."
"I feel like there is no ``Me; I feel there has been a merging of
man and machine."

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