What Flow State Actually Feels Like (From Someone Who Hit It 10 Times in 15 Years)

In almost 20 yrs of competitive short track speed skating, I experienced true flow state exactly ten times.

Not ten times a season. Not ten times a year. Ten times total across my entire Olympic career -- thousands of hours of training, thousands of races, decades of mental preparation, and I hit that effortless, timeless, transcendent state maybe once every two years.

I want you to sit w/ that number for a second bc it probably doesn't match what you've been told. The books & podcasts & optimization culture make flow sound like something you unlock, like there's a system, like if you just build the right morning routine & do the right breathing exercises you'll find yourself in "the zone" on demand.

I tried everything. Started meditating daily at fourteen years old. Worked w/ sports psychologists who taught me visualization techniques so detailed I could feel the cold of the ice before I stepped on it. Built rituals & trigger words & breathing protocols so precise they bordered on obsessive -- same warmup, same music, same exact movements in the same exact order before every single race.

None of it could summon flow on demand.

What did those 10 times actually feel like?

Time didn't slow down -- it disappeared entirely. I wasn't making decisions anymore, the decisions were making themselves through me. My body knew things my conscious mind hadn't processed yet.

I'd watch the race replay later & not remember half the moves I made bc there was no "me" making them. Something else was operating.

Those moments were transcendent & they were magic & I would give almost anything to feel them again.

They were also unreliable.

We want flow to be a skill we can develop, a state we can access. And I get why -- bc when you're IN it, you feel invincible. You feel like the version of yourself you've always suspected existed but could never quite reach. Of course we want to live there.

But here's what I've found, at least for me -- the chasing is the trap.

I've watched leaders & founders & executives burn through enormous amounts of energy trying to manufacture peak states. They read the books, buy the supplements, attend the retreats, all in pursuit of those magical moments of effortless performance. And meanwhile foundational work that creates the conditions for flow to occasionally show up gets neglected.

The other 99% of my career? That was thinking.

Constantly thinking. Analyzing gaps in the middle of a race w/ eight skaters moving at 35 mph in a space the size of a bball court. Adjusting position, managing fear, fighting through noise in my head, grinding through competitions where I felt nothing special at all.

There's a 4:30am memory that sticks w/ me. Colorado Springs, maybe 2003, and I'm doing intervals in an empty parking lot in the dark. My dad is sitting in a brown diesel Volkswagen Rabbit w/ a barely working heater, timing my laps on a wooden clipboard while I skate w/ a miner's light duct-taped to my helmet.

There's no flow happening. There's no transcendence. It's just cold & dark & my legs are screaming & the only thing keeping me going is a decision I made before the alarm went off -- I would show up whether the magic came or not.

That's not a peak state. That's work.

And work is what won the medals.

I think about this all the time now, especially working w/ organizations & teams. Bc flow obsession isn't limited to sport -- it shows up everywhere.

Founders chasing the creative high instead of building systems. Sales teams waiting for confidence instead of picking up the phone. Leaders postponing hard conversations bc they're "not in the right headspace."

What I keep coming back to: people who build careers around chasing peak states usually burn out. The ones who learn to love the 99% -- the grinding, the thinking, the showing up when nothing feels magical -- those are the ones still standing at the end.

I've sat across from CEOs who feel like they're failing bc Monday doesn't feel like the highlight reel. Talked to founders who think something is wrong w/ them bc the passion they felt in year one has turned into something quieter, heavier, more complicated.

What I try to share w/ them is what I wish someone had said to me at 22 -- that quieter, heavier version IS the work. That's not a symptom of something wrong. That's what sustained performance feels like from the inside.

Flow is something that happens to you. Discipline is something you choose. And the gap between those two things is where most of us live.

I won eight Olympic medals. Most decorated U.S. Winter Olympian in history. And I can count on two hands the number of times I experienced the state half the internet is trying to sell you a shortcut to.

Maybe that's discouraging and maybe it's freeing (I think it's freeing).

Bc it means you don't have to feel transcendent to do transcendent work. You don't have to be "in the zone" to perform at the highest level. You have to keep showing up, keep thinking, keep adjusting, keep choosing the work even when -- especially when -- there's no magic in it.

The magic, if it comes, is a gift. Not a strategy.

And the people who understand that? In my experience, they tend to outlast everyone else. More on this later.

--AAO