The State of “The Flow” and Its Importance When Improving Your English

Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it!

Video Transcript Below

Hi guys, hello boys and girls! Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog! Today let’s talk about THE FLOW. And I read about the concept of flow or should I say THE flow? Because it’s a particular state of mind. And I read about that concept a while ago while I was doing a little bit of research into the subject of procrastination.

We all – I suppose – have that quality to procrastinate sometimes. You know, it’s a vice because it’s a terrible feeling, you know? You know exactly what you’ve got to do but you just can’t do it for whatever reasons. You just find yourself constantly getting distracted.

For instance if I had a task of writing an article for instance I would find myself making cups of coffee every 15 minutes and checking my email and checking my website’s stats and whatever. And then 5 or 6 hours later the article still wouldn’t be even started. I would have only 1 or 2 paragraphs.

And so that’s the typical case of procrastination. And I’ve been guilty of that at certain stages in my life. And I was doing a little bit of research into it and I found out that people who don’t procrastinate they can achieve the state of mind whereby they are fully immersed into the activity at hand so their mind doesn’t even wander. And that’s the so-called state of THE FLOW.

When you’re in the flow you are super creative, you are enjoying that particular activity to the fullest, right? You don’t even think about anything else. Nothing else exists. So drawing parallels with creating written content for example for my website, that would be just me just writing about the subject, right? I would be fully immersed into it. I would know exactly what I have to say, obviously a little bit of planning goes a long way, and that would have to be done beforehand to know what you want to say but for as long as that’s done I would be into it and nothing would stop me. I would be totally unstoppable, right?

So how does this concept of the flow relate to spoken English performance? Well, it’s the same thing. We all have that particular state of mind which is triggered by whatever reasons, right? When we can speak in English almost like native English speakers. And it doesn’t matter, our level of English. Well, obviously if you were a total beginner, you wouldn’t have that ability to even speak fluently. But then again, you wouldn’t be able to listen to this video anyway, right?

So this whole English Harmony project is obviously geared towards those foreign English speakers who’ve already achieved a decent level of speech and understanding and that sort of thing. So it goes without saying that all you guys have that ability to be in that flow, in that state of mind whereby you can speak just like native English speakers but oftentimes external factors prevent you from doing that.

And those factors are multifaceted such as people making you anxious. Obviously you don’t have to blame others, it’s all on you, kind of, but those people play a big role in the whole thing, in your ability to speak and deliver your English speech. So if people make you anxious, if you are trying to compare your speech with the other person’s, especially if they’re a native English speaker, that will have a detrimental effect on your fluency.

And if you want to impress others with your speech, if you’re under pressure to deliver, for example you have to deliver a speech or whatever or you’re attending an interview or you just start a new job and you want to deliver in your position and you’re speaking with your colleagues, your customers, your superiors and you want to achieve that level of fluency and deliver that speech that’s required for your particular position. And obviously all those factors would have sometimes a detrimental effect on your fluency. It can kind of backfire on you and you will find yourself not being able to deliver it.

So if you can eliminate all those factors you will be able to achieve that state of the flow where you can speak totally unhindered, you wouldn’t even have to think about how you say it or what you say. Well, obviously you have to know what are you talking about, right? But the point I’m trying to make is that we all have that ability to achieve that state of mind where we can perform just like native English speakers, just like I do now, right?

I’m not, obviously, bragging. I’m not trying to say that I’m speaking just like a native English speaker but I’m talking about the feeling that I have, you know? I feel like I’m speaking like one, you know? I feel totally unhindered; I’m giving my fluency totally a free rein so to speak. And in order to achieve that in my opinion the best way to go about it is just do a lot of spoken English self-practice when you are on your own.

It kind of goes back to the same again: on your own you are totally unhindered. There’s nobody to prevent you from speaking just the way you want. And you can experiment with different types of speech, different speeds, different ways of pronouncing certain words and so on and so forth. And eventually, you will be able to nail it. Through a lot of experimentation you will be able to nail that state of the flow. And once you’re in it you will be like “Wow, this is it. This is the real deal. I can speak fluently!”

So once you’ve achieved that state of the flow you can carry that feeling with you at all times. And whenever you feel like you’re not performing well, whenever you have that bad fluency day for instance you can always go back in your mind and remember that, yes, I know how to achieve the flow feeling and if I practice on my own again I will be able to go back there and that will reinforce your confidence as a foreign English speaker.

So that’s my message for you today, my friends. I hope that you enjoyed it. And obviously if you have any further comments please don’t hesitate to publish them in the comment section below. Thank you and bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!