Ever had an experience when time seemed to stand still?

A time when you were so “in the moment” or in the zone that you virtually had an out-of-body experience. Where everything seemed to move in slow motion?

Racing car drivers and elite athletes often have that experience during a race - when they’re so in sync with the Universe that time seems to slow down so much, everything you do is effortless.

If you’ve seen the movie “The Matrix”, remember when Neo died and then came back to life as “The One” … when everything moved in slow motion and because of that he was able to deflect every bullet that was shot at him?

T-H-A-T’s what I’m talking about here (although we certainly don’t need to die to achieve this state).

With the right partner you can achieve “flow” in your relationship on a regular basis.

Maybe you have had an experience when you’re making love with your partner and you are so in-sync that you seem to merge and become as one. Where you have an out of body experience.

When you’re in the right relationship and in the right situation you regularly experience a state of flow -where synchronicity happens time and time again.

When you are so in-sync with each other that you feel each other’s pain. You finish each others’ sentences. You know what each other is thinking.

This state of being is called “flow”.

Flow is also when synchronicity occurs. It’s when you think of a person, and he telephones that instant.

It’s when you need to find that extra $1000 to pay a bill and a surprise $1000 tax refund arrives on your doorstep the next day.

The term “flow” was first coined by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi in his book “Flow”.

It states that there are 9 steps to achieving flow. They are:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging (Csíkszentmihályi, 1975. p.72).

Everyone is different so the way in which one person achieves flow in a relationship differs from the way in which another person achieves flow.

The first step in achieving flow in a relationship is to achieve flow in other areas of your life. How “in flow” are you at work, with your family, with your health?