Flow: Your A game versus your B game

The media is stressful, so it is important to be in flow or in your groove, if you’ve got a media event coming up. Having a presence in the media is a very quick way of increasing your profile and strengthening your brand, but if you’re out of flow or out of sync with yourself, you cannot perform your best. This is problematic for the interview that you’ve got coming up because you might be robotic, you might be stuck on a script, you really might be quite useless to yourself and an audience.

If you are someone that races around to networking events, meetings, brainstorming ideas, that is a person totally in flow. Concentrating on your strengths and what you are good at, increases the idea of balancing yourself and your ‘flow’. Concentrating on what you can control, like scheduling your diary, enables you to dictate your day how you want it.

Only the other day there were problems with my train line and instead of getting off at my usual station and doing my usual platform walk, admiring all the architecture up, the lift down the lift across the street in the office, piccolo in hand when I feel magnificent, totally in flow. And I had one of those walks this morning and just feeling beautiful, enjoying the day, feeling the sun on my skin and breathing deeply in and out of my nose, getting ready for the day. That’s when I’m in flow. And I’m thankful to say I’ve got a beautiful routine coming into work. And that’s how I aim to feel. That’s how I do feel a lot of the time coming into work.

But, you know, sometimes or often, like all human beings, I drop out of flow and I’m not at my best. So the train was delayed, the train got off at a different station. I didn’t know where I was walking. I was getting cranky. I thought, this is not a good start to the day. Coming into the office sucks. So straight away, when you’re at a flow, your positive thinking turns to negative thinking. When you’re out of flow, you’re focusing on things you can’t control. I can’t control the train system, right? This negative thinking turns into negative feeling, turns into negative action. I noticed myself out of flow on that morning coming to work and I thought, okay, I’ve got to stop this, stop for a coffee. I had a really nice interaction with the barista, got a good coffee, and popped back out on the street. You know, the walk to the office is only a block or so. I started enjoying the architecture, which I usually do, enjoying the nice weather, and the positive thoughts started coming, and I started feeling better. And here I am back in flow. I’m doing a different walk to work than usual, but it was just noticing being out of flow helped me get back in flow.

I talk about this because if you’re out of flow heading into a media interview, this is problematic for you if you’re focusing on what you can’t control, that being what the is about to ask, that’s a problem for you.

When you go into an interview, if you focus on what you can control, which is the story that you’re about to tell, you can control your breathing, you can smile to make yourself and your body feel better and the audience feel more comfortable with you. You can control this cracking story that you’re about to tell. You can control these messages that you’re about to deliver. You can control all of that, but you can’t control what the interviewer’s about to ask. We’d encourage you to pivot out of that into your own stuff anyway.

Being in flow is really important in media interview scenarios because being stressed and full of fear and full of panic is not really getting the best out of yourself. I do think you can survive media interviews when you’re full of fear and panic and the like.

Being in flow and being out of flow in something to reflect on and get your head around a little bit, so whether you’re, you know, a professional broadcaster or whether it’s yourself going into your first interview, you are going to be you’re going to be nervous and that’s okay. But I want you to focus on what you can control. That’s your dialogue and the narrative that you’re about to share. I want you to make a point to back it up with a great story, but in the lead up to it, that’s the worst bit.

Speaker1: Delivering is actually the easy bit because you’re on, it’s the waiting where you’re going to be nervous. So how do you nurture yourself when you’re not feeling well? Do you go for a swim? Do you sleep? Do you talk to your grandmother? But however you nurture yourself so you can feel better, you better jump into those practices so you can get into flow and start relaxing a little bit more because that’s when you’re really going to perform really well.

When we’re focusing on what we can control, we’re not worried about the opinion of others. We’re not worried about failing either. When you’re worried about failing, that’s a problem, let that go, the result doesn’t matter. All that matters is your actions right?

So there you go, guys, you’re either in flow or you’re not, that’s natural for all of us. You’re not just noticing when you’re out of flow is powerful enough to flick you into flow. And I think that’s when you’re going to perform really well. Enjoy implementing that.