from surviving to thriving: hack your flow state

The Muse has a simple and fun role: to remind you to play. It teaches you to use the Muse role as your Inner Coach.įlow State Runner Model, highlighting the Inner Coach voices Your Muse This article covers an important one of the 5 roles. If you want to take the helm of your mind-coaching journey, your mission is to build a strong inner voice for each role and to integrate each voice into your sports and life pursuits as needed. Your Inner Coach has five important roles and areas of responsibility: Bouncer, Teacher, Guide, Muse, and Motivator. You can always just howl at the moon, high five a race volunteer or complete stranger, skip a rock, hurdle over some kids playing in the creek, or do whatever your primal mind yearns for to create a moment when you Release and forget about your running. And no excuses with this one, the instrument I like to carry on mountain runs is a 10 foot / 3.3-meter-long Swiss Alphorn! But remember, the size of your instrument is not what’s important, it’s that you recognize the value of play in triggering a shift in brain wave activity and as a trigger into flow. I’ve even carried musical instruments on runs and paused for a few minutes here and there to play them. Here’s an example: to unlock the release phase and just to add spice to life, I’ve stopped mid-run to swing on playground toys, hop from log to log in the forest, splash through streams, and play fetch with a friendly dog.

This is especially useful to encourage Play. The Muse hack also supports the Release stage of the Flow cycle (Struggle-Release-Flow-Recovery). It’s also a very effective tool at helping you bust out of any negative spiral that leads to obsessing about the conditions you may find yourself in. Check out the first article in this series for more insights into how I teach Inner Critic and Awareness training. The Muse is one of several key tools you can use to shut down your Inner Critic.

It’s a quick way to shift your focus by using an intentional distraction. I use this tool whenever I need to help someone quit feeling sorry for themselves.

I’m excited to teach you how to use a visualized Muse character as a mind hack.

From surviving to thriving: hack your flow state