How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 88

3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of
action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is
altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the
course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be
adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is
neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an
effortlessness of action.
9. A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one
can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing
it)
10. Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of
awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness
merging.
Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.
Etymology
Flow is so named because during Csíkszentmihályi's 1975
interviews several people described their "flow" experiences
using the metaphor of a water current carrying them along. The
psychological concept of flow as becoming absorbed in an
activity is thus unrelated to the older phrase go with the flow.

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