Self-Acceptance & Finding Your Flow
Chris Randell | Self-Acceptance & Finding Your Flow
In this insightful talk, Chris shares his story with us about leaving school with an excellent academic record but a lack of self-awareness. Chasing an unfulfilling path in the financial sector for several years, the financial crash in 2008 made him rethink his life. He stepped into the self-awareness arena, using the idea of flow to exploring who is he and what he wants.
Today, Chris is founder of ‘Flow Coacher’. Working with individuals, SMEs, start-ups and Management, Flow Coacher shifts people and businesses into their unique flow, empowering them to think bigger, more strategically and more creatively. His mission in life, is to enable people to go to work feeling passionate about what they are doing, in a workspace they love being in and make a purposeful and positive contribution to the world.
“If everybody in an organisation is doing work that they love doing, then the organisation will not fail. It will be amazing.”
Key Highlights
3:00 Left school with a great academic record but lacking in self-awareness. He had no idea who he was or what he wanted to do in life. Spent three years as a litigation lawyer but hated it.
5:00 Started a financial recruitment business learning everything about running a small business. Despite being successful, he hated it.
6:00 Financial crash of 2008 made him rethink. ‘Can I do this for another 10 years?’ ‘No, I’d rather shoot myself.’ He had been drinking heavily to numb the pain of not knowing who he was.
6:40 Spent 1-2 years working on himself.
7:00 Established ‘Flow Coacher’: helping business make key, strategic decisions and ensure their employees love their roles.
“As soon as I was really authentic with the world…then the opportunities started opening up…I didn’t have to try to be anything else.”
8:00 ‘Band of Brothers’ volunteer, providing rights of passage and mentoring for young men who have often been in the criminal justice system.
9:00 Using adventures to find out more about myself: 46 hours of football raising £10k; cycling 312km with 5000m climb in 14hours in Majorca.
11:30 What is Flow?
12:25 For Chris, Flow means knowing who you are: recognising the dark, shadow parts of ourselves as well as knowing our strengths
13:00 ‘I’m not going to compromise bringing myself to the world. I’m only going to do stuff that supports who I am.’
“Flow means knowing who you are: recognising the dark, shadow parts of ourselves as well as knowing our strengths”
Further Reading
Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi’s idea of Flow (https://positivepsychology.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/).
💡 Key Lessons
The Five elements of Flow:
1. Caring passionately about that activity.
2. Being challenged in that activity.
3. Challenging your skill set.
4. Having autonomy.
5. There’s a clear purpose to what you’re doing, it’s benefiting others.
Recognise your dark, shadow elements as well as your strengths.
Knowing and not compromising on who you are can open up opportunities.
💭 Coaching Questions
Examine what you do for work, using the Csikszentmihayli’s 5 part Flow method. Ask yourself:
In what areas do you experience flow? How can you do more of this?
In what areas do you lack flow? Why?
From recognising when you are in flow, reverse-engineer how you’re going to get there.