I blacked out. At least, it felt like I blacked out. But really? It was just trying to eat with my left hand. As simple as it sounds, I was so focused that I was oblivious to the world around me. My girlfriend and I usually eat dinner together and watch TV. A smart nutritionist [...]
I blacked out. At least, it felt like I blacked out. But really? It was just trying to eat with my left hand. As simple as it sounds, I was so focused that I was oblivious to the world around me.
My girlfriend and I usually eat dinner together and watch TV. A smart nutritionist will tell you not to eat and watch TV, but I’m not a smart nutritionist.
Normally, I eat and watch TV just fine. I taste my food. I know what’s going on during the show. (We just finished watching Breaking Bad because apparently we were the only two people on Earth that hadn’t seen it.)
A few weeks ago I started eating with my opposite hand, as suggested by Steven Kotler. He recently wrote a book called The Rise of Superman. It’s about extreme sport athletes, and how extreme sports have progressed so quickly in difficulty and risk.
Kolter’s answer is a little something called flow. Flow is a magical state. You’re zoned in on something and you lose your mind completely to the goal at hand.
Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.
– Wikipedia
Extreme sport athletes are flow junkies. They can’t get enough of it — they even become addicted to it.
Addiction? Energized focus?
Sure, sign me up.
A simple tip from Kolter to create flow: eat with your opposite hand.
I know, I know. We went from extreme sport athletes hitting flow states while scuba diving naked over Mount Everest (or something) to me sitting in my underwear watching Breaking Bad holding a fork in my left hand. E
xit out of this window now in anger if needed.
Beyond training to resist the caveman-death-grip-and-stab technique, I noticed something: I couldn’t pay attention to the TV anymore. All focus went to understanding the utensil. Even the taste of food suffered. I found myself witlessly washing everything down the hatch, thinking only about how to maneuver my hand to effectively jab the next vat of vittles on the plate.
What’s next? Brushing teeth? Wiping the, erhm, waste?
You bet. (Hold off on anything that involves sharp objects though.)
It might not be the most impressive physical capacity you ever develop, but consider taking a trip to left hand land more often. Your brain might thank you in the long run. Forming new neural pathways. Prodding plasticity. You know, that whole chestnut.
And even if it doesn’t, you’ll at least be one step closer to ambidextrous. You never know when able to use your opposite hand might come in handy.
+++++
Another good book on flow is Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
See me eating out of the bowl…?