How do you achieve meditative focus? The answer lies with a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine, which controls the level of your brain arousal or alertness.
At very low levels of norepinephrine, you feel drowsy or sleepy but at very high levels, you get agitated and restless, and then outright panicky.
But somewhere in between, at the right level, you get into the flow state. This is where you ideally want to operate.
Then how do we achieve the optimal level of brain arousal?
Our brain arousal correlates with the difficulty level of our goals. When your goal is too easy, you feel listless or bored. And at very high difficulty, you feel agitated and frustrated. And right in the middle, is the ‘flow zone.’
That is why, video games have multiple levels — the game designers want you to quickly get to the right level, where your skill matches the difficulty level. You then get into flow and keep playing for hours.
When we want our team members to learn and progress, we need to challenge them but not so much that they melt down.
Choose the middle path. One more thing the Buddha was right about.
– Rajan