Flow Rida

 

My occupation may or may not take a turn depending on the resources I have available. This week, not much is new. The only mechanical duty I did this week was look over the fluids in my dirt bike to make sure I was good to go riding. My oil level was a little low, so I added what my bike needed, checked my antifreeze, and was good to go. When it came time to ride, I pulled the rookiest move I could have possibly made. I filled up my gas can before we hit the trails and forgot to top off my bike before we left. Luckily, I still had half a tank to ride on when I realized it. I did not ride for much longer. I ate some lunch, and decided I was so out of shape and exhausted enough that heading home for a nap sounded better than the anything else I had planned.

After reexamining the characteristics of flow, I can certainly say that when I am on my bike, I experience the balance between challenges and skills, the clear goals of what I plan to do on my bike and where I plan to go, my worries and negative thoughts dissipate, and minutes tend to turn into hours. Although I do not always feel like I have a sense of control over where I am going and how I control my bike, I do. Although I say the balance of challenge and skill are there, sometimes my lack of skills are reflected when the challenge conquers me. There are only a few other occupations that bring a state of flow to me, such as jet boating on the river or admiring the love I have for my dogs and when I get to contribute to their quality of life. I would say I am a worry wart, so being able to experience time where worry is not within my range of thought, is very therapeutic for myself.

Since my new occupation is taking a shift in a sense, I would say that learning how to mechanic can be challenging at times. Sometimes it takes the strength I don’t have, the mechanical ingenuity I lack, and a helping hand when a helping hand isn’t helpful. It certainly requires you to think outside of the box in times when you feel stuck. It presents you with opportunities to become creative while working and creative in your work. It could potentially have the capability to create a flow experience, but I feel I would need to be doing something I have enough knowledge in, feel confident in my abilities to complete the task by myself, and thoroughly enjoyed the task I was completing.

As I sense a form of independence within the rhythm of flow, I reflect on my own personal preferences and characteristics and see a similarity. You could say I show signs of having an autotelic personality, as I tend to complete occupations for my own sake, but I still very much so have a mission set forth or meaning behind why I complete or participate in certain occupations. My personality could potentially be a barrier in the ability to create a sense of flow within certain occupations because I do worry too much at times, I do tend to let my mind wander into negative spaces, and sometimes when I look at time, it seems to drag on forever. These particular aspects of my personality might hinder my ability to find flow more often but can be encouraging factors to self-reflect and practice the measures of mindfulness it takes to be able to experience flow more often.