This newsletter is about to get SPICY 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Things suck for me right now, but the flow state will get me through this!

I’m going through a vile breakup. As a lover of life lessons and growth, there’s no greater gift to my work than something like this, and I’ll tell you what happened soon, but I’m still what therapists call ‘sitting in the shit’. I have no choice but to ride out this initial suffering before I can bounce around with EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNT. This newsletter is going to play a key part in my recovery. 

I’m living in limbo, moving between my flat when it’s empty and my parent’s house, as I wait for the life I shared with my ex to be untangled. I’m living out of suitcases, incredibly irritable and bursting into tears all the time. My life isn’t where I want it to be. I’m single again when I don’t want to be and I’m recovering from the shock of an unexpected breakup. I’m grieving the life I thought I’d have and I hate a lot of things right now, but I also know that I have the tools to get through this. 

This newsletter has been a constant in my life since the beginning of 2020 and it kept me going through multiple lockdowns. Writing is my survival tool and this newsletter has allowed me to show up for myself and my writing no matter what else was going on in my career or how devoid of ideas or motivation I felt. My mental health relies on being regularly in a state of flow, which is something our modern, distractable world makes very hard to achieve. 

Flow state was named by the psychologist Milháy Csíkszentmihályi in 1970 and describes when we are fully engaged in one activity that is challenging enough to be engaging, but not too hard. It’s a state of deep focus, that energises us and we lose all sense of time passing when we’re in it. Flow state can happen outside of work: reading, watching an engaging TV show (with your phone away), cooking, playing video games or spending time with friends all can put us in the focused mindset, as long as we’re only engaging with that one thing. I don’t think it’s talked about enough about how fundamental focus and flow are to our well-being.

Distractions are the enemy of flow state and modern work with its notifications and response expectations make reaching a flow state a battle for most people. In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport writes: ‘Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.’  He goes on to say: ‘To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.’ My desire for uninterrupted focus is why I opted out of traditional office work. So when I’ve been unable to focus or do anything meaningful over the last few weeks, it’s been incredibly frustrating. I’ve been bored and restless but unable to focus. It’s been a cruel symptom of my grief. 

However, an email landed in my inbox asking me to write an article for a newspaper yesterday and the deadline was in a few hours. It was a HELL YES from me. It was an unbelievable relief to have the pressure of a deadline and to be able to focus on something else that wasn’t an overriding sense of disappointment about the breakup that I’ve been experiencing. Writing to a deadline was exciting and it made me feel alive again. This is why I write: flow state will save me. 

Our relationship with our work can be so important to our well-being. It can also be disruptive and punishing, but it can be an area of our lives that belongs to just us and we can design it in a way that is fulfilling. The saying goes that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade and I’m going to be making a lot of (fizzy!) lemonade in my work. This newsletter is about to get SPICY. I don’t need to change the tagline: love, loss, meaning and the messier sides of life are what a breakup is. 

Think of the content! My friends have said to me and while it’s bittersweet, there’s something therapeutic that the hard times of my life are going to service my work. Aside from flow, the moments of friendship and support I’ve received have been outstanding. It’s driven home to me how important it is to fill multiple aspects of your life as one could crumble at any time. Also, my hair is looking good at the moment and my parents are doing my laundry, so things aren’t totally awful. I have lots to be grateful for. 

I have so many ideas for what I’m going to write about in the coming weeks, so thank you for being a newsletter subscriber. I hope that you, too are able to make space to reach a state of flow in your days, whatever may be happening in your life. 

With love, 

Tiff x