The flow state that athletes, performers, and adventurers seek is directly linked to allowing fear rather than resisting it. If you’re not embracing fear, you’re constricted. If you are embracing it — “oh yeah, there it is, that’s the fear, I’m going to fully allow this thing to be felt and move through me” — then you’re in flow state.
This applies far beyond extreme sports. The same dynamic operates in business, relationships, and daily life. Constricting around fear makes performance rigid and clunky; in extreme sports, this rigidity literally makes the feared outcome more likely. In business and relationships, constriction around fear creates the very dynamics we’re trying to avoid.
Courage isn’t overcoming fear or pushing through it. Even “feeling the fear and doing it anyway” has a quality of pushing through. True courage is “feeling the fear and then doing what’s authentic.” Or perhaps even simpler: feeling the fear, and the rest happens on its own.
Related Concepts
- Embracing fear versus avoiding fear
- Welcoming fear over conquering it
- Flow state is embodiment applied to life