The Flow State AKA The Science-Backed Superpower of Every Human

Pop culture has made most of us in love with the idea of superpowers. We spent hours bingeing on Marvel movies (or DC, if you play for the other league) or reading a ‘manga’ about a bald main character who is the strongest man in the world. No matter what, the concept of being a superhero is almost always a fictional story for us. However, as humans continuously pursue achievements, time and time again, our bodies prove that fiction might be a reality.

The most decorated Olympian of all time, American swimmer Michael Phelps, is one of the best examples of a realistic superhero. His top speed is an impressive 8.8 miles per hour, only a few seconds behind the Great White Shark. Perhaps, you might be thinking that ‘Phelps is an Olympian athlete, of course he would be a fast swimmer, pfft’, well, Phelps is still a human with lungs and four limbs, but his body’s speed in the water is already comparable to an aquatic apex predator. And he’s not the only one; Usain Bolt, Jamaican Olympic sprinter, whose top speed is 27.7 mph, is just a few paces behind a horse, which has an average speed of around 30 mph.

What if I tell you that we, normal, non-Olympic humans, can achieve superhuman feats? Ever heard of stories of mothers lifting whole cars to save their children? How about a child carrying their parent out of a burning house? This ‘superpowered’ state, which made them superhumans, is known as the ‘flow’ state.

The ‘flow’ state might be a familiar term. It is also commonly known as “adrenaline rush”, where we suddenly perform in a way that we might say as ‘objectively better’ than our average performance. Fictional stories had used this condition as a plot device to separate a main character’s strength from other characters in a story. However, such a state could be activated and utilized by everyone. In fact, it could even be activated by a mathematician and be used in something as non-physically stimulating as solving mathematical equations.

One of the major misconceptions regarding flow state is that it is caused by adrenaline alone, more specifically, the adrenaline hormone called norepinephrine. Recent studies showed more hormones, and pre-mediated conditions are involved in activating flow state. For one, the arduousness of task in hand is crucial. The task must enter a narrow level of difficulty, where it must not be too easy, which would lead to boredom, or it must not be too hard, which would lead to anxiety or frustration. The level of current skills must match the task, the same reason why Olympians are able to create their records through flow state. Their levels of athleticism are enough for them to achieve superhuman feats.

Aside from that, attentional focus, also called task engagement, is also notably increased, resulting in unimportant stimuli or thoughts being inhibited, such as the loud ‘booing’ of the opposing audience being practically nothing to an athlete during a game while he is in a flow state. Not only that, the brain network called ‘Default Mode Network’ which is theorized to be responsible for self-reflection resulting in stress, is also inhibited. This could mean that flow states could be stress-relieving. Published studies also propose that this state also lessens the perception of time and increases the feeling of sense of control.

A 2016 study conducted by Martin Ulrich from the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Ulm, Germany, along with his colleagues, Johannes Keller, and Georg Grön, discovered that the hormone dopamine could also be involved, along with adrenaline. The dopaminergic pathway of the brain is also known as the ‘reward system’, which shows that activating the flow state improves optimism, mood, and motivation, as well as reducing the feeling of fatigue and stress during the task.

Little is still known regarding the state of flow. As medical technology advances, hopefully, research on this neurological condition continuously investigates its physiology. But one thing is certain. According to the co-founder and CEO of Flow Research Collective, Rian Doris, revolutionarily, our anatomy is geared towards achieving the state of flow. Our brains want us to be in that superhero state. However, our current lifestyle, where every small thing is magnified and designed to distract us, makes flow almost impossible to activate.

Activation of flow requires several conditions that are not doable with someone who works a 9-5 desk job, but it is not impossible. Doris had advised taking a full day, which he calls the 1-month day, wherein you practice your craft and focus solely on it. Who knows? Maybe one of us could be the next Carlos Yulo, winning two Olympic gold medals, or the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composing music that would be listened to for centuries to come. The first thing we could start today is to find what we love doing and spend time practicing it, until we find that sweet spot of difficulty that challenges our skills and unlocks the flow state.